Once Upon a Highland Autumn Read Online Free Page B

blanket like a custom tailored coat, or so he hoped. The man stared at him anyway. They both looked down at the battered trunk, and Kit bent to read the engraved brass plate on the front, just above the hasp that held the box closed. Captain Nathaniel Linwood, Cobham’s Dragoons.
    “Ancestor of mine,” Kit murmured. He bent and tried to open the hasp but it was rusted fast, or locked.
    “I’d best be getting back to work,” the man said, and tugged his forelock and departed back the way he’d come, neither interested nor curious about the old trunk.
    “My great-uncle,” Kit informed the portrait that hung above the fireplace, and recalled that the man in the painting would already know that, of course, being Nathaniel’s nephew. He glared down at the mayhem balefully.
    Kit had no recollection of Nathaniel Linwood, as he’d died the very year Kit had been born. In fact, Kit bore his great-uncle’s name as his own middle name by way of tribute to the man’s passing. Nathaniel had never married, or left a child, or a fortune, or anything at all as far as Kit knew. He’d been a soldier, the second son of the fourth Earl of Rossington. His name was merely a notation in the family Bible—born 1709, died 1785, soldier.
    But here was Nathaniel’s trunk, a scuffed military footlocker that had seen much hard wear. It called up tales of bold adventures, battles, skirmishes, and campaigns in distant lands.
    Kit felt a tug of regret. He would have liked to have gone on campaign, if things had been different and he had not inherited the title. He might have gone exploring when his military days were done, had adventures, and traveled. He’d read of such things—sea voyages to strange islands, travelers who crossed deserts with caravans of silk, riding on camels, explorers who dug for ancient treasure in Egypt. He ran his hand over the scarred leather and wondered what adventures Nathaniel might have had, and what he’d left inside the trunk.
    Kit tugged at the hasp again, but it refused to budge, and the box remained tight-lipped about whatever secrets it held.
    Kit wondered where the key might be. Had old Nathaniel taken it to his grave? He was buried here at Turnstone where he’d lived the last years of his life.
    A loud thump shook the plaster above his head, and Kit flinched and glanced up at the ceiling. He had arrived late last night, and the local inn was filled to capacity with the men working on the renovations. He had had no choice but to spend the night in his coach, or to make the best of it and find shelter amid the drop cloths and scaffolding inside the abbey. He’d chosen the latter, taken the blanket, and sent his coachman and valet off to search for a more pleasant place to stay.
    Kit wondered how often Nathaniel had found himself sleeping rough, waiting for battle to begin, or exhausted after the fighting ended. He shut his eyes. The pounding of hammers could easily have been the pounding of drums. The calls of the workmen might have been officers bellowing orders. That—the army, not the renovations—might have been his life . . .
    Kit tilted his head and studied the box from the side, then the back. The chances of finding the key, even if it was exactly where Nathaniel had last left it, were remote indeed. Kit had never broken into anything before, or picked a lock. He’d never had reason to, though he had read of such things. It took something sharp—or so he understood—and thin.
    He opened the drawer in the nearest sideboard, searching for something narrow and pointed, such as a letter opener. Only a candlesnuffer came to hand. He put it back and turned to the desk—the most logical place to find a letter opener—but the drawers were barricaded by a pile of other things, including a painting of a small angel, who gazed at him with parsimonious horror at Kit the would-be lock-pick. He found a box filled with lady’s cloaks, crumpled and musty, and several bonnets, their once-proud