Slipping on his trousers, he walked over to the large window of the conservatory. Pushing aside a fern, he looked outside, his mind hard at work. Eve had taken the committee's decision better than he had anticipated.
How he had dreaded telling her. She loved her asylum and her patients, but he'd been able to cheer up her disappointment. This thought pleased him immensely, and had him smiling.
Rubbing the back of his neck, he thought about the gold Bluebeard had given him. He had already used much of it to buy back the Hawkmore estate in Ireland. It was impossible to help Eve from that particular chest. But perhaps they could move to his ancestral home. Although the estate wasn't as large as the Towers, it was a nice-sized manor and had no bell tower.
Speaking of the bell tower, Adam found himself staring at a dim light near it. Someone was out there. Was it Hook? Would the pirate captain try again so soon? Surely not, Adam reasoned. He hoped not.
He knew Hook was going to be a formidable enemy, but he would never prevail. The quicker Hook realized that pertinent fact, the better for all concerned. And if the one-handed pirate didn't agree, then a dawn meeting with pistols or swords could easily be scheduled.
Throwing on his shirt, Adam went to investigate the dim light. It was Fester, busy digging another hole. Adam shook his head. He had begun to doubt that the leprechaun had any coins at all. He certainly had no sense, as he was breathing heavily, his shirt covered in sweat.
"Fester, let me help you dig."
The crusty old leprechaun nodded, a sly grin on his face. "I found me treasure map, I did! Forgot I stowed it in a ship's bottle over a hundred years ago. But I found it tonight." He chortled gleefully. Then his grin faded and his brows furrowed with a scowl. "That daft widow woman cleaned me bottle of its ship tonight. I can't get it back in! I guess it was fortunate, though, since the map was tucked in the sail."
Adam shook his head in amusement. "Thank heavens for small favors—and deranged widows. So, you hid the gold here? But, a hundred years? That's a long time, Fester. How could you have a map of this place when you lived in Ireland at the time? And all those years ago? It doesn't add up."
Chortling, the leprechaun pointed to the new hole he was digging, one just to the left of a massive chestnut tree, which was centuries old, its trunk enormous. Inside the large hole was something that glinted.
Fester swung his lantern over the hole, explaining as he did, "A hundred years ago, I had come to England as a young lad following me rainbow. I met and fell in love with a lovely lass, an elf, and was to be married. Unfortunately, her father was a grand ol' earl and didn't want his daughter marrying anybody who wasn't an elf. He especially didn't want an Irish leprechaun. He had me imprisoned and stole me pots of gold." Fester began scraping the dirt from the glinting object while Adam helped by shoveling the hole wider.
"I escaped and rescued me gold. But they were hard on me trail, so I buried me pots by an old church and a house with a bell tower, and I drew a treasure map. I got away, but was cursed on me way back to Ireland. That blasted bloody earl hired some wayward witch to do the evil deed, and I ended up asleep for sixty years. For a long time I forgot the gold."
"And you remember it now?" Adam asked, eagerly lifting what seemed to be several pots out of the ground. His breathing hitched and his eyes had a glazed look, and he stared down at what seemed to be many more pots still in the ground.
"Right. I remembered only recently about the gold. And I couldn't for the life of me remember where I'd put it. Still, I remembered enough to find me way back here to the Towers. Luckily I'm a little bit mad, so Dr. Eve took me in. She even lets me dig, although it drives her crazy." And with those words, the lucky leprechaun pulled up two more pots and wiped away some of the dirt. Underneath were golden nuggets.
Adam burst out laughing. The little pots were all filled to the brim with golden coins! He must be living a charmed life—he'd not only found Eve in Eden; he'd discovered the pots of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Flee-Adam Had-Her
Eve awoke alone in the conservatory, her toes nibbled by the Venus flytrap. Swatting the always ravenous plant, she sat up and noted that she was wrapped in Adam's jacket. She could tell by the sun filtering through the windows that it was probably midmorning. She stretched, then realized that she was wearing Adam's jacket and nothing else. And she recognized another pertinent fact: Adam was nowhere in sight.
"Why didn't he wake me?" she asked the nearby plant, but it merely shut its trap.
Finding her discarded clothes, she quickly dressed. Frowning, she shook her head. She could have been caught in the altogether by one of her staff or patients! "Like a regular little trollop," she muttered. Surely Adam had considered that before leaving her. The patients here had enough problems as it was; they certainly didn't need a loose woman for a doctor.
After such a wonderful night together, and Adam's whispered avowals of love, she had thought she would be kissed awake by a stiff and sexy husband. Instead, she was stiff and sore from sleeping on the ground.
She sneaked up to her bedchamber to get dressed, then went back downstairs and asked everyone—even Junger—if they had seen Adam this morning. No one had seen hide nor hair of him. Eve began to worry.
Before she could get overly nervous, she became downright concerned, though for a different reason. Fester ran into the room. He was shouting at the top of his little lungs that his gold had been stolen. At first she listened to the leprechaun's rant with half an ear; Fester's gold was always stolen. Then Fester related the story of his map, and how helpful Dr. Adam had been in helping him dig up the treasure. After all that digging, the leprechaun said, he was mighty thirsty, so he had left Adam guarding the gold while he went into the library to pour himself a drink. He had been so merry that he had drunk the whole bottle of whiskey and fallen asleep. When he awoke, he'd found both Dr. Adam and his gold gone. His face a mask of pure misery, the belabored leprechaun held up a handful of gold coins. Old golden coins, Eve noted vaguely. Then her world collapsed. Fester's gold was real. She was the fool.
All Eve could do was stare at Fester with a dead expression on her face. Her brain refused to accept that Adam had made love to her and then left to steal the leprechaun's gold. That betrayal was too ugly, and it was breaking her heart into a thousand tiny pieces—pieces of her loving nature, her pride, and her trust, which would never be completely put together again.
Her fierce Bluebeard pride reared up. She was going to kill him when she found him, and she would leave no hiding place unsearched. The lying libertine had not only stolen her virginity but her heart. And apparently he thought that gold was more important than spending their golden years together. How could she have fallen for his polished charm, and how could she have polished his family jewels so lovingly, so trustingly? She would never forgive herself.
She indulged herself by throwing a temper tantrum—and about fifty pieces of her favorite porcelain. The display made Teeter vow the younger generation was cracked, and Eve stormed off in a huff to lock herself in the cellar. There she screamed until she was blue in the face. It felt remarkably freeing. She marked down the process as the I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Iced Dreams treatment.
After her hysterical fit, she sat down on a barrel of ale and wept until her eyes were red. She wasn't getting enough funding for her beloved Towers, and now this? How could Adam have done it to her? What an idiot she'd been.
Sniffing, she sat in the dark cellar and found that she hated him. Yes, she despised him almost as much as she did herself for trusting him. She had known just who and what he was—well, maybe not exactly who, but definitely what. The crook had always been enamored of wealth, yet she had been in a stupid, romantic haze, believing that he had grown more enamored of her. How foolish!