“The third fellow was the brightest of the bunch. He didn’t think that even a beating would get them the location of the chest, especially since I knew they would just kill me afterward. But he also didn’t want word getting out that they’d welsh on a deal as it might affect their getting future jobs. So, he suggested a compromise. They would let me live, and take me and the iron chest to the ship they worked on. It was setting sail for America the next day, where they would trade me to the Indians as a slave in exchange for some furs they could then selloff. They would more than treble the money they’d expected to get from George for just killing me.

“It took a bit of persuasion for the friend of the dead attacker, but in the end his greed won out and they all agreed to the plan. I wasn’t too pleased about the being traded to the Indians part of the plan, but I would be alive and alive was better than dead so I told them where the false wall was, and how to open it, as well as the iron chest, and then they bound and gagged me. They dumped me in the back of a cart, set the townhouse on fire and drove to the prearranged meeting spot where George was to pay them.” He glanced toward his brother again. “I heard it all . He wanted to know every moment of the night’s events, wanted to know if I’d begged for my life, how crushed I’d been by my valet’s death . . . He seemed to take delight in the idea that I’d suffered.”

Richard shook his head with disgust. He’d never imagined his brother had hated him so much. “Once they had satisfied his morbid curiosity and gained their pay, the men took me to the docks and dumped me in the hold of a ship. I stayed there for what seemed like forever.”

He closed his eyes at the memory of what had turned out to be one long, dark hellish journey for him. They’d kept him bound the entire trip and only removed the gag to give him food and water. Days had sometimes passed between feedings and the journey had seemed unending. By the time it did end, Richard had been half dead, weak and feverish, his wrists and ankles a mass of infected sores from the chafing of the ropes binding him. Uncaring of that, his three captors had dragged him from the hold, thrown him over the back of a horse and ridden out to try to trade him as a slave to Indians in exchange for furs. However, in the shape he was in, no one had been willing to trade anything for him. Finally his captors had simply pushed him off the horse, and then ridden off.

“They just left you there to die? After you’d given them your iron chest?” Christiana asked with outrage. “How did you survive?”