The Revelation is Love Page 10

  She gave a slight nod and he dashed outside again, glad that he had a clean handkerchief with him.

  By the time he returned, Celina had managed to sit herself upright.

  “You should stay lying down,” he advised gently.

  She gave him a faint smile.

  “I like being up and about – ”

  Her voice seemed stronger now and he arranged the wet linen on her forehead and held her wrist to feel her pulse. Perhaps it was a little faster than it should have been but only a little.

  Rupert finally allowed himself to hope that she was going to be all right.

  He rearranged his jacket on the step behind her so it provided a comfortable support.

  Then he went and leant against the window, hands in his pockets studying her and alert for any change in her condition.

  “You caught me when I fell?” Celina enquired, her voice a little stronger now.

  He nodded his head.

  She put a hand to her forehead as he removed the damp handkerchief.

  “You have saved my life,” she sighed wonderingly. “If you hadn’t caught me – I would probably have broken my neck.”

  She looked up to the top of the steps and then at the flagstones and shuddered.

  “You could have left me lying, dead or dying, while you looked for the heirloom. Then, if you’d found it, you could have hidden it somewhere else and gone for help too late to save me and told everyone we could not find it.”

  Rupert straightened up, horrified at what she was saying.

  “How could you even think that?” Rupert sounded appalled. “No one would do such a dastardly thing.”

  “No?” She gave him a curious look. “I could name you some who would!”

  He knew she was referring to the MacLeans.

  Then he remembered his suspicions about her.

  “I am ashamed to say,” she went on in a low voice, “that I have wondered whether I could trust you fully.”

  She lifted her head and her gaze met his.

  “Now I know that you are an honourable man and that you will not try to deceive me.”

  Her frankness was so attractive, he wanted to rush over and draw her into his arms.

  Instead he now felt that he should, in return for her confession, admit to his own doubts about her.

  He squared his shoulders and took a deep breath.

  But before he could speak the displaced stone Celina had fallen from caught his eye.

  “Good Heavens,” he cried and leaped athletically onto the stairs two steps above where she was sitting.

  “Please, do be careful,” Celina implored him. “You have seen how dangerous these stairs are.”

  He stopped short of the point where Celina had fallen.

  From below he had seen that, when it slipped, the stone that had caused Celina’s fall had revealed a gap.

  Through it he could see some sort of metal lever.

  Testing his weight on the step to ensure it was firm enough, Rupert tried to grasp the lever.

  Too much mortar was in the way.

  He then drew Duncan’s skean dhu from his belt and started to scrape the mortar away.

  He was conscious of Celina leaning against the wall at the foot of the stairs watching him, one hand held up to her mouth as though she feared for his safety.

  At first gradually and then more quickly, the mortar fell away.

  At last Rupert could put his hand around the lever and pull it towards him.

  There was a gasp from Celina as, with a rumble, the step above swung outwards, forcing Rupert down a step to avoid being thrown off the stairs.

  “What has happened?”

  “Keep back,” urged Rupert as she started to climb up. “I don’t want you falling again.”

  The movement of the stone had uncovered a large and dark hole. Such a sophisticated device could only have been installed to provide a place where something of great value would be concealed.

  Rupert felt carefully inside.

  Almost immediately he gave a grunt of satisfaction.

  “What have you found?” asked Celina urgently.

  He gently lifted out an ancient leather satchel and cradling it in his arms, he came back down the stairs.

  Celina was watching him, holding out her arms as though to catch him if he should stumble.

  “Do you think this could possibly hold the treasure that has caused so much trouble?” he mused as he reached the ground.

  She gave him a warm smile.

  “There is only one way to find out.”

  He grinned back and put the satchel on the table.

  The leather straps were so old it proved impossible to release them through their rusted clasps.

  Rupert brought out the skean dhu again and sawed through each strap. It took a heartbreakingly long time.

  Inside was an object wrapped in woollen plaid.

  Rupert looked at Celina.

  “Would you like to undertake the honours, Mistress Stirling?”

  She was startled.

  “Do you not want to reveal it yourself?”

  “You were honest enough, Celina, to tell me that before your fall you had not been able to trust me. I now have to admit that, despite all you did to free me from the threats of your relatives, I did not feel able to trust you.”

  Celina looked as shocked as he had felt when she made her confession.

  “I do, however, trust you completely now and as a token of that trust, I want it to be you to reveal whatever is inside that fabric.”

  She looked at him for a long moment.

  As the silence lengthened, Rupert was feeling more and more nervous.

  Then Celina gave him a warm smile.

  “We have both been fools. Shall we agree that all suspicion is now in the past?”

  Rupert thrust out his hand.

  “Let’s shake on it.”

  Celina’s eyes twinkled.

  “Shall we use your knife to mingle our blood and so seal the pact?”

  For a moment Rupert felt a jolt of passion.

  Then she laughed.

  “We are not children. Our words don’t need blood to be sincere and binding.”

  She took his hand and gravely shook it.

  “Trust and honesty between us, yes?”

  He nodded, his gaze fixed on hers.

  A slight flush came to her cheeks.

  Then reverently Celina lifted up the bundle, placed it on the table and began to unwrap the contents.

  As the last of the fabric fell away, both Rupert and Celina gasped.

  Standing on the table before them was a gold cup.

  It had a shallow bowl with two handles. Its short stem was broken by a round knob and was set onto a broad base.

  The cup was not very large and its only decoration was an incised pattern around the rim, but the proportions and the skill with which it had been made were such that it was one of the most beautiful objects Rupert had ever seen.

  Celina sighed as she looked at it.

  “It’s lovely,” she breathed. “Surely it’s a chalice?”

  Rupert nodded.

  “My father collected several from various ages. He said that he liked to think of priests taking communion and handling these precious vessels so many centuries ago. He felt they were a living link with a sacred past.”

  Celina put out a hand.

  “May I touch it?” she asked in an awed voice.

  Rupert picked up the chalice and gave it to her.

  “There – now we have both touched it.”

  He watched her turn it in her hand so that she could admire the interlaced patterns running around the rim.

  It was about seven inches in height and some nine inches in diameter.

  “It looks as though it could hold a lot of wine,” she reflected after a moment.

  Rupert sighed and then began to speculate,

  “So maybe it originally belonged to a large Church or even a Cathedral. It’s like one
in my father’s collection that he claimed was from the twelfth or thirteenth century, possibly from Constantinople or Jerusalem. I just wonder how it came to belong to a Scottish family?”

  As he spoke, Rupert looked inside the satchel.

  “Hello, there’s something else in here.”

  He extracted a piece of crumpled paper.

  “Maybe this will tell us something.”

  After scrutinising it for a few moments, he handed the paper to Celina.

  “I think it’s written in Gaelic. I seem to recognise one or two words, but I don’t know enough of the language to be able to understand what it says.”

  She put down the cup and took the piece of paper.

  “It’s a little difficult to read, but I think I can make out the gist.”

  Celina sat down on one of the chairs, frowning over the paper.

  “How is your head?” Rupert asked her.

  She smiled absently.

  “Getting better by the minute!”

  Rupert sat nervously on the other chair, afraid his weight might prove too much for its rickety condition, but it seemed to hold up and he enjoyed gazing at Celina as she sat there studying the document.

  She was somewhat pale, but otherwise seemed to be recovering well.

  The fact that each of them had admitted to a lack of trust in the other seemed to have cleared the air.

  He felt totally at ease with her and hoped fervently that it was now the same for her.

  At last she looked up from the paper.

  “The chalice was brought back from the Holy Land by a Scottish Crusader. It was apparently sold to him for funds to feed the starving poor.”

  “It must have been something like that. I am sure that no Christian would have stolen it,” commented Rupert, staring at the lovely treasure.

  “By tradition it has to be handed down from eldest son to eldest son – ”

  “So it is an heirloom.”

  “Indeed, and this paper goes on to state that if there is no male heir of the Beaumarche line – ”

  Celina stopped and looked at Rupert.

  He knew what she was thinking – that the heirloom must belong to the MacLeans.

  “If there is no male Beaumarche heir,” she went on, “then it has to go to the Crown of Scotland. I’m so sorry, my Lord, as Beaumarche is the MacLean ancestral home, it would seem that this heirloom belongs to them.”

  Rupert thought for a moment.

  “I don’t think we can take that for granted,” he said eventually.

  Celina’s expression then darkened and he wondered if the trust between them was already beginning to fracture.

  “Let me think,” Rupert began again. “It may well be, however, that Lord MacLean is the rightful heir to the Beaumarche line, but just because his family has passed down a property of that name, does not automatically mean that he, too, is a Beaumarche.

  “If so, then why is he not called Beaumarche? My grandfather must have had some grounds for believing that the heirloom belonged to him, even though his name was not Beaumarche either. After all, the document we found that sent us to this place was in a Fitzalan record book.”

  He paused, thinking hard.

  “I remember seeing a book in the muniments room with a family tree. It didn’t seem relevant at the time, but now it could well solve the mystery of why neither of our families is called Beaumarche.”

  “Then we should both go back to Castle Fitzalan at once,” Celina suggested decisively.

  She put the paper on the table beside the chalice.

  “How wonderful it is we have found the heirloom and are so near to discovering the rightful owner.

  “I do hope,” she added impulsively, “that it turns out to be you.”

  “My only hope is that the truth will end this stupid feud for ever,” asserted Rupert soberly.

  “And mine too,” agreed Celina fervently.

  Quietly they then wrapped up the chalice again and placed it back in the satchel.

  As Rupert added the piece of paper, Celina asked,

  “I just wonder why the document we found at your Castle was written in French and this one was in Gaelic.”

  “Are they both in the same hand?”

  Celina took out the paper and looked at it again.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then each writer probably used the language they were most familiar with. We know that a French woman wrote the other document. Probably another member of the family – maybe one who was more comfortable using Gaelic, wrote this.

  “If they were afraid that the Castle might fall to an enemy, they must have been under great pressure. It would make sense to cut down the amount of time it would take to prepare both documents.”

  “Oh, yes!” she cried, “I can see how it must have been. The courtyard filled with people rushing to and fro trying to prepare a few necessities to take with them if they had to flee and secreting precious items away.”

  There was a far away look in her eyes as though she had been transported back in time.

  “And no doubt some trusted servant was given the satchel and told to go and hide it here in the tower.”

  “The hiding place must have been prepared some time before. In those far-off times I would suppose many people would have devised some safe and secret place to protect the most precious of their possessions.”

  The document went back into the satchel with the chalice.

  “Are you sure you are able to come with me to the Castle?” Rupert asked Celina. “Would it not be better for me to take you back to Drumlanrigg? You cannot quite have recovered from that blow to your head.”

  She put up a hand and felt the bump under her hair.

  “It’s still sore, but I am not suffering in any other way, I assure you, my Lord. Come let’s row back and return the boat to its owner. Something is telling me that we should reach Castle Fitzalan as soon as possible.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The blow to Celina’s head ached more than she was prepared to admit to Rupert, but she managed to row in a matching rhythm with him as they crossed the loch.

  She looked back at the tower receding gradually as they slid across the dark water.

  The sun had gone and clouds were massing.

  They would be lucky to reach Castle Fitzalan before rain fell.

  The satchel lay in the bottom of the boat between their feet.

  Despite her pain, she found herself visualising the lovely golden cup they had found.

  It really was a treasure.

  How much would the MacLeans desire the chalice once they knew exactly what it was and what it could be worth?

  Celina knew that Rupert himself did not care what the chalice was worth as it was its sheer beauty and what it represented that appealed to him.

  The MacLeans would never appreciate its beauty – only what it could be sold for.

  She glanced at Rupert sitting beside her, his strong arms pulling his oar in exact time with hers.

  She wished that she could remember being caught in those arms.

  A flush come to her face at the sudden need she felt to be held by him again, but this time when she was in full possession of her senses.

  They reached the shoreline and Rupert jumped out and held the boat steady. She picked up the satchel and took his hand as she stepped out.

  A tiny jolt of electricity ran through her arm at his touch and again she flushed.

  She told herself firmly that she had to control such foolishness – it was only a short time ago that she had been engaged to Hamish and believed that the two of them were destined to spend the rest of their lives together.

  Hamish!

  She remembered now resenting the way he forced her to follow his desires rather than her own.

  If Hamish wanted to go fishing and she had wanted to ride her new pony, they went fishing. If he wanted to play tennis and she thought that it would be fun to organise a croquet party, they played tennis.

/>   If she protested at his autocratic ways, he would pull her hair, then put his arm round her shoulders and give her a hug.

  It was the hug that stayed with her, not the pulling of her hair. How stupid she had been!

  *

  They walked over to the little cottage to retrieve the horse and trap and soon they were travelling at a fast trot to Castle Fitzalan.

  “Why did you say you thought we should reach the Castle as soon as possible?” Rupert asked her.

  Celina shrugged.

  “I get these feelings sometimes. I always have, ever since I was a child. I don’t know exactly what is going to happen, just that it will be good or bad – or very bad. My mother used to say it was part of my heritage because she had similar feelings and that I would grow out of them as she had. The day that she and my father were killed, I had the worst feeling ever.”

  Celina shuddered as she spoke, even now she could remember exactly how the black cloud had come down and engulfed her. She had screamed and screamed and no one had been unable to comfort her.

  Rupert looked at her.

  He did not, like so many people, seem to think that she was slightly crazy, instead he enquired gently,

  “How dark was the cloud when you thought about the Castle?”

  Celina repressed a sudden shiver that she could feel all around her.

  “Dark.”

  “Then we’d better go there as quickly as possible.”

  Rupert cracked the whip and Jessie speeded up.

  “Did you say that Lady Bruce’s housekeeper had provided us with some food?”

  As they drove on, Celina fed them both with hunks of bread and cheese, slices of delicious game pie and some pieces of a rich fruitcake. There was a flask of wine too.

  They both ate heartily, although Celina could not shake off the cloud of doom that surrounded her.

  She just knew for certain that something dreadful awaited them at Castle Fitzalan.

  The rain Celina had foreseen now began, at first a fine mist, but soon it was deeply penetrating.

  “Good Heavens, it was all bright sunshine at noon. Where did this all come from?” questioned Rupert.

  “You are in the Highlands now and the weather can change in a twinkling.”

  By the time they reached Castle Fitzalan, they were soaked through and dusk was setting in.

  The big double door with its iron studs was closed.