“It’s possible.”
Her cousin groaned. “Sam, nobody believes in buried treasure anymore.”
His father glanced sideways at her. “You see? His mother’s influence. He’s got both feet planted firmly on the ground.”
“He wants to go to Amherst College. That’s Grandpa’s alma mater.” Samantha winked at her cousin in the backseat. “There’s some Bennett in you.”
Isaac rolled his eyes. “Don’t remind me.”
* * *
Dozing—and pretending to doze—on the drive west at least allowed Samantha to stop trying to convince her uncle that she hadn’t lost her mind. He’d interrogated her on the contents of her backpack—he was pleased she had a first-aid kit and an emergency whistle—and her reasons for venturing to Knights Bridge on her own. “You and this damn pirate, Samantha. You’re obsessed with this Captain Benjamin Farraday of yours.”
No argument from her.
She hadn’t mentioned the cider mill painting and the story she’d discovered in his father’s Boston office. She had enough to overcome with her uncle without telling him she was off to Knights Bridge because of an anonymous painting and the fanciful writings of an unknown author—a woman, Samantha would guess given the feminine handwriting. She had no doubt her uncle would have dismissed The Adventures of Captain Farraday and Lady Elizabeth as worthless to a proper historian and tossed the pages into the fire.
Samantha had copied them and brought them with her, possible clues to her pirate mystery, as well as a reminder of the reasons she was undertaking this mission and returning to Knights Bridge. It was a fun story. One particular passage had stuck in her mind.
Lady Elizabeth Fullerton refused to choke on the terrible rum the black-haired, black-eyed pirate had thrust at her. “What’s your name?” she asked, returning the flask to him.
“Farraday. Benjamin Farraday. And yours?”
“Bess.” She’d already considered what name to give him. Something simple and not too far from the truth, so that she wouldn’t forget. “Bess Fuller.”
He grinned and leaned in close to her. He obviously didn’t believe her. “Well, Bess Fuller, drink up. We’ve a long way to go before you’ll see England again. You can thank me later for saving you.”
“I’d rather have drowned than to be rescued by a pirate rogue.”
It was a rousing tale of a spirited high-born British woman who’d been captured for ransom by a dastardly enemy of her remote but wealthy father and then “rescued” by a dashing pirate. Although entertaining, the story bore only marginal resemblance to the life of the real Farraday—at least his known life. There was much not yet known about the Boston-born pirate and his exploits.
Samantha had her grandfather to thank for sparking her interest in Captain Farraday. A few months before his death, he had plunked a copy of an eighteenth-century broadside in front of her. It detailed the crimes credited against Farraday, then a wanted man. “You like pirates, Sam. Check out this guy.”
She had dived in. As her grandfather’s health quickly had begun to fail, he loved for her to sit at his bedside and tell him every new development in her research. She had theorized that Farraday might have hidden treasure in the wilderness west of Boston, first as his personal insurance policy against his capture, arrest and ultimate execution, then to finance a new sloop to continue his raids on other ships.
She had little to go on—no proof beyond snippets here and there and her leaps to connect the dots of her research. She didn’t know why her grandfather hadn’t told her about the painting and the manuscript pages in his closet—he could have simply forgotten they were there. Now she suspected at least the story had brought Captain Farraday to his attention in the first place.
“Samantha—Samantha, we’re here.”
She sat up straight at her uncle’s voice. “Right. So we are.”
He slowed the old Mercedes as they came to the Knights Bridge town common, an oval-shaped green encircled by a narrow main street with classic homes, a town hall, a library, a general store and a few other businesses.
Caleb shuddered. “This place is straight out of 1910.”
“It just looks that way on the surface.” She pointed vaguely. “You can drop me off anywhere here.”
He stopped in front of the Swift River Country Store. “What about mosquitoes? Ticks? I hope you packed DEET.”
“DEET and Scotch,” Samantha said lightly. “The necessities when hunting pirate treasure.”
Caleb looked at his son. “You’re going to be an engineer.”
Isaac managed to stir enough to wish her luck. As she grabbed her pack out of the backseat, she caught him smirking and muttering something about hoping she found herself a sexy pirate of her own.
“This isn’t about sexy pirates,” she told him.
He gave her a knowing grin. “Right. It’s about scholarship.”
She ignored him. “Enjoy your college tour.” She smiled at her uncle. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you in a few days.”
“Have fun. Steer clear of carpenters.”
Samantha wished she hadn’t told her uncle how Duncan McCaffrey had come to fire her. Being spotted in the snow by a small-town carpenter paled in comparison to some of the ways her father and his baby brother had gotten themselves into trouble over the years.
Caleb and Isaac didn’t linger. Samantha waited for the Mercedes to disappear back out the winding road to the highway before she set off. There was nothing she needed to pick up at the general store. She didn’t have to ask for directions—she had a paper map and a map on her phone, but she’d committed her route to memory.
* * *
Ninety minutes later, Samantha slipped off her backpack and set it at her feet as she paused on a simple wooden bridge. It spanned a rock-strewn stream that had to be Cider Brook. She was on a back road that meandered among green fields, old stone walls and woods that were changing color with the arrival of autumn.
She could see a sliver of the Quabbin Reservoir in the distance, its quiet waters shining blue in the afternoon sun. Before Quabbin, three branches of the Swift River had run through a valley of peaceful New England villages. The valley’s abundance of freshwater streams, rivers, ponds and lakes had proved too tempting for growing, thirsty metropolitan Boston to resist. In the 1930s, the villages had been forcibly cleared out, razed and the valley flooded to create a pristine source of drinking water for their neighbors to the east.
The “accidental wilderness,” as it was called, was a stunningly beautiful sight on an early-autumn afternoon.
Samantha wished the weather was cooler. The day had turned warmer and more humid than she’d expected. She unbuttoned her jacket and was tempted to take it off altogether. She doubted she would have use for the merino wool throw she’d packed, in anticipation of a chilly night looking up at the stars. With little ambient light out this way, the night sky would be spectacular.
Across the bridge, the narrow road curved uphill to a rambling white clapboard farmhouse with black shutters and a red barn set on a hill that overlooked the valley. Huge maple trees, their leaves just starting to turn color, shaded the front lawn. A dark brown dog slept in the driveway, and a white duck—a pet, Samantha assumed—paraded across the grass as if it owned the place. She could hear an unseen rooster crowing in the summerlike stillness.
If she remembered her map correctly, the farmhouse was at a hairpin turn in the road, which then wound back toward the village. That meant the stream under the bridge definitely was Cider Brook.
She