But the lady was shaking her head. “Not to say I doubt you, but—but I’ve made it a point to overhear as much as I possibly can about this, given that I’m the one who brought it to their attention for Beth. And they have more than one buyer interested. I’ve heard them whispering about higher bids and an auction. They’ve made mention of an American.”

“What?” The whelk went flying.

Telford, face placid, snatched it out of the air and slid it back onto the shelf.

Sheridan sputtered for a moment, then his face went positively ferocious. “New plan, then.” His gaze moved to Beth, then to Oliver and Libby. “We find it first.”

25

One month. One month to the day since that first Wednesday when it had all begun. When the man had found Libby on the beach and handed her the cannonball. One month since Oliver had knocked on her door and demanded to know where his sister was. One month that she’d called this cottage home.

How, in one little month, could her world have changed so fully? Libby trailed Beth through the cottage—hers, then theirs—toward the bedroom they’d both called their own. She’d known all along that someone else had stayed there before her. Many someones else. She’d known this was just a rented cottage that she’d spend a season in and then leave. But it hadn’t felt strange before.

It did now, following a former occupant into the bedroom and watching as she knelt down in front of the chest of drawers, reached under it, and peeled something off the bottom of the drawer that had always stuck.

Beth’s hand emerged with two pieces of paper. Or rather, one large piece of brown paper that closely matched the wood of the drawer, adhesive tape edging it. And a smaller piece of parchment that the paper had clearly been protecting.

A treasure map, hidden all this time beneath her stockings. Libby sank to a seat on the little desk chair while Beth flipped the parchment over and spread it on the top of the chest.

“If you’ve retrieved it, do bring it out here so the rest of us can see it, Beth,” Oliver called. The gentlemen, of course, hadn’t followed them into the bedroom. Which was good, because if they had, this whole situation would feel even more surreal, the place even less Libby’s, despite all her things still taking up residence.

Or some of them. Nearly half her belongings were in her room at the Moons’ now. And Darling had been curled up happily in Mrs. Moon’s lap when they left, seeming to have adjusted rather well to his new mobile life. The only possession still in this room that shouted her ownership was the microscope at her elbow.