As if sensing her discomfort, Clark pulled out a text for them to start with. “What are you looking for, exactly? I know what a backgrounder looks like for an archaeologist. I assume curse breaking is . . . different?” He tried to keep the judgment out of his tone and missed by a hair. Still, Riley appreciated the attempt at restraint.
“Look for something weird,” she told him. “Things or people going missing, mysterious occurrences, unexplained phenomena. Anything that doesn’t fit.”
They pored over the books and his notes together. She hadn’t expected him to help. Had sort of figured he’d sit around and make rude quips while she worked. But Clark showed her the timeline he’d constructed so they could narrow in on any major event that might have occurred on or around the property in the 1700s, and he drew her a sort of clan family tree for both the Campbells and the Graphms when she couldn’t keep all the names straight.
Hours bled together, the sun fading behind the tree line.
“What?” Riley said the third time Clark winced when she scribbled an idea on a Post-it note and stuck it inside one of the texts.
“Nothing.” He tore his eyes away as if from the scene of a car crash.
Of course, Clark kept all notes in a separate Moleskine with section tabs, where he recorded any ideas or findings with a corresponding label of title, author, and page number. Imagine having the luxury of so much time that you could justify doing something so needlessly slow when sticky notes were right there.
Clark argued with himself too, under his breath, “No, that can’t be right,” while running his finger beneath a passage.
Riley bit her thumbnail, smothered a smile, and didn’t say anything as she flipped to the next page.
Occasionally, one or the other of them would get up to stretch.
Clark groaned as he rolled his shoulders.
“You good?” Riley might have some Motrin in her purse.
“Fine.” He grimaced in a way that made him look decidedly the opposite. “Tweaked my back when I hit the ground trying to save someone from going up in flames.”
“Okay, relax. No one asked you to go all Smokey Bear. I could have just as easily stopped, dropped, and rolled without you.”
“Since I understood less than twenty-five percent of the words in those sentences”—gingerly, he returned to his seat—“shall I go ahead and assume there was a gracious thank-you in there somewhere?”
Riley rolled her eyes. Sheesh. You catch on fire one time, and they never let you forget it.
Eventually, when her stomach growling turned supersonic, Clark insisted on serving her what turned out to be a half-decent frozen pizza.
“Do you want a beer?”
Riley’s head shot up. Mr. No Fun had been holding out on her.
As if to demonstrate, he opened the fridge and held up two bottles of some kind of dark ale she didn’t recognize.
Her mouth watered. It was a tempting offer after a long, frustrating day. But Riley hesitated.
Having a beer with him felt too casual. Too familiar. Not a business arrangement, but something she might do with a friend.
“No, thanks,” she said.
He put them both back and brought her a glass of water she hadn’t asked for instead.
Riley took a sip and got back to work.
By nine o’clock, they still hadn’t found anything and her eyes had begun to tear from strain. She was already thinking about the route back to the inn when something in an agricultural journal caught her attention.
“Hey.” She nudged Clark’s hairy forearm. “What about this thing with the angel’s-trumpet?”
He knuckled at his eye. “Is that a euphemism?”
“It’s a plant.” She showed him the illustration.
“Pretty?” he said, obviously hoping that was the answer she wanted.
“No. Look.” She tapped the text below the drawing. “A particular varietal used to be native to this region, right around the castle. Usually, the flowers are yellow or pink, occasionally orange, but the ones that grew here were dark blue and extremely rare. Something about the nutrients in the soil. It says here that growers used to make a fortune cultivating it—that it was a show of wealth to have them on display—but then the plant went extinct.”
“So?” Clark sketched a literal trumpet in his notebook, a pretty good approximation.
“So,” she repeated, “they call it ‘the riches of the holding—the jewel in Arden’s crown’ and it went extinct overnight.”
Pulling the journal forward, Clark studied the page and frowned. “These accounts are old and likely exaggerated. It wasn’t uncommon back then for insects or even a harsh frost to suddenly change the biome.”
Leave it to him to come up with the driest explanation possible.
“Yeah—or the castle—and all the surrounding soil—got fucking cursed!”
“An equally likely conclusion,” he deadpanned.
Riley didn’t care if he wanted to be a dick. This was weird. And weird meant a lead. How could he not see the connection? Her blood pounded. This was something!
“Here.” She cross-referenced the timeline. “June third, 1779. Who lived in the castle then?”
Under the table, their knees knocked as she sat forward for a better view.
“That’s near the very end of the clan war. Almost no one was left on either side.” Clark looked at the list of names, running his finger down the page, looking for someone with a death date later than that. “Philippa Campbell,” he said finally. “The clan called her the last daughter. They left her in the castle during the battle at Dunbar and none of her kinsmen returned.”
“And you said that dagger was made for a woman!” Riley sprang to her feet. “Oh my god! Do you get what this means? We have a who, and a when, we know why—hello, she was left desperate and alone with enemies at her doorstep—we just need a how and we’re in business, baby!”
“Am I the baby in that sentence?” Clark said dryly.
“Come on.” She smacked the desk. “We found something.”
He yawned. “I hope you’re not simply reaching for my benefit?”
Riley’s momentary elation dimmed. Apparently her breakthrough was boring him. And yeah, that was pretty much the story of her life. Is that why he’d sat here with her for hours, working at her side, to prove to himself at the end that she had nothing to show for it? To watch her play at research when he was a professional?
She’d almost forgotten for a bit that she was alone in this. That was her problem. She wanted something that wasn’t on offer—for him to believe her.
“Forget it.” She reached over and flipped the agricultural journal closed. “Let’s just call it a night.”
“All right,” Clark said easily, already reaching forward to close other books and gather pens. Obviously he couldn’t wait for her to leave.
Of course he can’t. He thinks you’re a menace, she reminded herself. You remind him of his deceitful best friend. Riley couldn’t help herself—despite her anger, her embarrassment, she felt bad for him.
Between the famous dad and his soap-opera-star face, it was probably hard for Clark to trust anyone. People must feed him bullshit constantly, trying to get into his good graces or his pants, respectively.