They climbed the dirty stairs and pushed open the door.
Trunks, crates, boxes, cloth bags, furniture, and every other item one might imagine finding in an attic was, in fact, to be found in that attic. They were stacked and piled and tossed about haphazardly so that the room looked something of a maze—a dusty, cobweb-ridden maze.
“Won’t this be fun,” Mirabelle said with a wry twist of her lips.
“It will certainly be time-consuming.”
“We can’t look through it all. The others will be back in only a few hours. They’re really not that dedicated to the sport.”
“Concentrate on the crates and trunks near the front of the room,” he instructed as he moved off to the side. “Keep an eye out for anything locked.”
She shrugged and picked a trunk at random. The lid opened with a load groan and a cloud of dust. She erupted into a fit of sneezing. When she finally recovered, Whit was standing over her holding out his handkerchief.
“Here you are,” he said. “Better?”
“Than what?” she laughed, and took the cloth to wipe her watering eyes. “Thank you.”
He shook his head when she tried to hand it back. “Keep it, hold it up to your nose and mouth the next time you open one of the trunks.”
“What of you?”
“I’ll manage,” he said and walked back to his crate before she could argue.
They worked in silence for the next two hours, moving from trunk to trunk and crate to crate. As she dug through another pile of moldering men’s clothing, Mirabelle came across a large lidded jar rolled up in a pair of breeches.
“How odd,” she murmured to herself. Odder yet, there was a folded piece of paper inside.
She took the lid off and tried to pull the paper free, but it was stuck to the bottom and the jar was so deep she couldn’t do more than grasp at the paper with her fingertips. She twisted her wrist and pushed until her hand popped through with a small sucking sound.
Yes !
She grasped the edge of the paper with her fingers and slowly peeled it back from the bottom. Miraculously, it came off in one piece.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
She pulled her hand back…and the bottle came back with it. Annoyed, she gripped the glass with her free hand and pulled. Nothing.
No.
She pulled harder, twisted her hand and wiggled her fingers. She tried yanking, tugging, gripping the jar by the rim and pushing. Nothing.
No! No! No!
She gaped at her hand, utterly appalled. It had to come out. It had gone through, hadn’t it? Why the devil couldn’t she get it back out again? She tried again, twisting her wrist this way and that, until finally admitting defeat. There was no possible way to get herself out of this ridiculous situation without help. She took a deep breath and concentrated on not sounding anxious.
“Er…Whit?” There, that sounded nonchalant, didn’t it? She’d hesitated a bit, but she didn’t think he’d noticed.
“Yes, what is it?” With his head still in a trunk, his voice sounded muffled and distracted.
“I was wondering…” Oh dear, how to put it? She licked lips gone dry. “I was wondering…”
Alerted by her hesitation, he emerged from the box and glanced over.
“Did you find something?”
“Not exactly,” she hedged.
Rising, he brushed his dusty hands on his dusty coat. “What do you mean by ‘not exactly’? What are you hiding, imp?”
“I’m not hiding anything,” she said automatically. “Not exactly…Well, I am, to be honest, but it hasn’t anything to do with my uncle or a counterfeiting operation, or—”
“I don’t much care what it’s about. I just want to know what it is.”
Damn and blast.
“Oh, all right.” She blew out a hard breath, only a little bit because she felt she needed to, but mostly just to stall. “I was trying…that is, I was attempting to reach something, you see, something stuck and…well, I hadn’t realized…”
“Out with it, imp.”
Resigned, miserable, she pulled her hand out from behind her back and held it up in front of her. She wanted, very badly at that moment, to hang her head in an aggravating mix of shame and apology, but pride kept her from dropping her chin. It might have shifted—along with her eyes—a little to the side in an effort to avoid eye contact, but that couldn’t be helped.
He didn’t react at first except to blink, clasp his hands behind his back, and run his tongue slowly over his teeth.
“I see,” he finally said.
“It won’t budge,” she grumbled, still unable to meet his eyes.
“Yes, I assumed that was why it was there.”
“And I can’t very well go back out there like this.”
“You certainly can’t.”
Annoyed by his continuing lack of reaction she dropped her hand and huffed. “Aren’t you going to laugh at me?”
“I certainly will.”
“Well, do you think you might trouble yourself to get on with it, so we can move on to the matter of—?” She wagged her bottle-hand at him.
“In good time. I want to be able to properly appreciate the moment. And this room—and our being in it together—place certain constrictions on the volume and length of that appreciation.”
“Would you please just fetch some soap and water, Whit?”
“Of course,” he replied, his lips twitching. “Wait here.”
“Where else would I go like this?” she muttered, as he left.
It seemed to take forever for him to return again—long enough, in fact, for her to give serious consideration to wrapping her hand in an old shirt and seeking him out. If she could have come up with a single reasonable explanation for having her hand wrapped in a shirt, should one of the servants notice and inquire after it, she would have done it.
“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find soap in this house?” Whit demanded when he finally returned carrying a bar of soap and a small basin of water.
“Some,” she answered. “As I’ve been waiting here like this while you searched.”
“I assumed there’d be some in one of the closets on the servants’ floor, but I couldn’t find a single one that wasn’t filled to the ceiling with other things…tools and books and old clothes and nearly everything but what really ought to be in those closets.”
“Like soap.”
“Like soap,” he agreed, as he knelt to set his burden at her feet. “And brooms and the usual cleaning supplies. Where do they keep all that?”
“They don’t, mostly, though some of it can be found in the kitchen.” She motioned with her free hand. “Where did you find that?”
“I had to go to my room. Sit on the trunk and let me see your hand.”
She considered telling him she could do it herself, but then realized with only one free hand, she probably couldn’t. Not as quickly as he could, and speed was of the essence when one’s hand was stuck in a bottle.
She sat on the trunk. “Did anyone see you or ask what you were doing poking into closets?”
“Nary a soul. I heard snoring coming from several of the servants’ quarters, however. Why does your uncle keep them on?”
She shrugged and watched him lather the soap. “No one else will work for him.”
“Ah.” He reached for her elbow and held her arm out as he ran the soap around her wrist.
“Whit?”
“Hmm?”
“I was wondering…”
“Wondering what?”
“I wanted to ask you before, but, between this, that, and the other—”
He looked up from his task. “What is it you want to know?”
“What is it you do, exactly, for William Fletcher? And how did you come to be doing…what ever it is you do?”
He went back to soaping her wrist. “You shouldn’t know anything about it.”
“A little late for that,” she reminded him. “I answered your questions la
st night. And it wasn’t something I cared to do.”
He was quiet for a long moment, until Mirabelle began to think he wasn’t going to respond at all, but then he set the soap down and began to use his fingers to rub the soap into her skin.
“I work, on occasion,” he told her softly, “as an agent for the War Department, of which William is the head.”
“Oh. Is he really?” She frowned in thought. “All this time, I thought he was simply a friend of the family.”
“He is a friend of the family. He just also happens to command a small army of spies.”
“Is that what you are? A spy?”
“Not exactly,” he responded, and with enough coolness that she knew he wasn’t going to elaborate any further on that topic. So she tried another.
“Is it often dangerous?”
“Not often, no. Certainly not more so than fighting a war.”
“Why do you do it? You’ve so much responsibility already.”
“I wish to give my family something they can be proud of.”
“They are proud of you,” she pointed out. “They’re immensely proud of you. You’re very nearly the perfect son, brother, and lord of the manner. Bit annoying, actually.”
“Why thank you,” he replied easily. “This is different. It’s…bigger. It’s something I can pass down to my sons—should I be blessed with them. It’s a legacy that can overcome several centuries of shame.”
“You’re ashamed of your heritage?” she asked with some surprise.
“I believe you met my father on several occasions,” he said dryly. “Though he was rarely home.”
She frowned at him. “He seemed a jovial enough man. I know he wasn’t the most responsible of men, but—”
“The rumors you’ve heard scarcely touched on his sins. He was a useless combination of dandy and rakehell with no care for anyone but himself. He wasn’t killed in a fall from his horse as is commonly believed. He died in a duel over an opera singer.”
“Oh.” Good Lord, she’d no idea. “I’m sorry.”
“Ah, well. He’s gone now and few people know the truth. Fewer still whose stories would be given more weight than my own accounting of events. Your uncle knows.”
“He does?”
“Yes, as do some of his guests. They ran in some of the same circles, you see, but as I said, no one cares to gainsay the Earl of Thurston these days. Not loud enough to cause concern, at any rate.”
But there were rumors of the truth, she knew. She remembered the whispers in the ballrooms and parlors right after the earl’s death, but like everyone else, she’d brushed them aside as petty gossip. Whit hadn’t had that luxury, she realized now. He never would.
“I am sorry, Whit.”
“As I said,” he replied taking hold of her elbow and the glass. “It’s over and done.”
He pulled her arm gently and her hand slid free of the jar.
“Oh.” She flexed her fingers experimentally.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, rubbing her wrist with the pad of his thumb.
“No.” It felt the very opposite. His touch sent her nerves to humming. “It feels…fine.”
“Just fine?” he asked and bent his head to press his lips against the tender skin on the inside of her arm just below her elbow.
“Er…nice. It feels very nice.”
“Only nice?”
“Well, it is just my arm.”
“I see.”
He rose to his knees, slid his hand around to the nape of her neck, and brought his lips to hers.
There was the softness again, the gentleness, and the need. She scooted to the edge of the trunk and after a moment’s hesitation, let her hands slide up to his shoulders. It was all still so new to her. The kissing, the touching, the way both made her feel wanton and unsure at the same time. She wasn’t at all certain what she should do, or shouldn’t do. But she was sure she wanted to continue doing it as long as humanly possible.
“You’ve the sweetest mouth,” he murmured against her lips, and she felt her heart skip an extra beat in her chest. “I told myself once it would taste bitter.”
She pulled back. “Bitter?”
He smiled at her. “It shouldn’t come as a shock that I was angry with you at the time.”
“Angry with…you’d thought of kissing me before? Before all this?”
“Once, when I was a younger man.” His grin broadened as he remembered. “We were yelling at each other over something or other, and I had the sudden notion of shutting you up with a kiss. I kept from doing so by convincing myself that you’d taste bitter.”
“You’d thought of kissing me,” she repeated with a slightly dreamy smile.
“I wasn’t yet twenty. I thought of kissing near to everyone in a skirt who wasn’t a blood relation…. Thought about it quite a lot, if memory serves.”
She brought her foot forward to press down on his own until he winced around the smile. He tugged gently on her hair.
“Jealous, are you, darling?”
She rolled her eyes at him, which wasn’t a particularly convincing denial, but worked well enough to have him standing up with a laugh and opening the paper she’d gone through so much trouble to retrieve from the jar.
“What is it, then?” she asked, prepared to be told she’d made a fool of herself over an old gambling chit or invitation to dinner. But when his face tightened, she stood and edged forward, impatient and nervous. Had she actually found something?
“What is it, Whit?”
Her heart drumming in her throat, she accepted the paper when he held it out to her. She skimmed its contents—twice. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but she’d rather thought it would be something a bit more incriminating than a simple delivery receipt for common house hold items.
Baffled, she held the paper up. “What is this?”
“A delivery receipt for—” Whit leaned forward to read. “—one case beeswax, small; one case port, large; two cases—”
She pulled the paper back. “I can read, Whit, I just can’t fathom why you think it’s important.”
“Look closer, imp.”
She did, but nothing grabbed her as being out of place. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I fail to see the relevance—”
He reached over and pointed at an item. “Two cases Gold Crown Ink.”
“And…?” she prompted. “I’ve never heard of it, but—”
“Gold Crown is remarkably similar in appearance to the actual ink used in the printing of some bank notes.”
She frowned thoughtfully. “If it’s readily available to anyone who wants it, then it’s not conclusive evidence against him, is it? Perhaps he simply likes the color.”
“It’s not readily available,” he informed her. “It has to be ordered.”
“People order inks all the time, Whit, and for a variety of reasons.”
“Two cases of it?”
“That is odd,” she agreed and looked over the list yet again. There were subtotals and totals at the bottom, invoice numbers, signatures, and the date and means of delivery. She glanced at the date again and laughed.
“This receipt’s almost a decade old,” she informed him.
“I noticed.”
She handed the paper back to him with an amused shake of her head. “If my uncle has been making poorly constructed bank notes for ten years, I should think someone would have noticed before now.”
“I’d thought of that,” he told her, taking the paper and stowing it away in his pocket. “There are several possible explanations. First, he could have been working on the process, attempting to improve—”
“My uncle works at nothing,” she scoffed. “Let alone at improving something.”
“Second,” he continued, “he may have had to wait for the remainder of the supplies, or wait until he believed the trail linking him to the supplies disappeared.”
“He hasn’t that sort of discipline, Whit.”
“Third, a
nd my personal choice—he’s been passing them off to someone else who circulates them out of the country.”
“Oh.” That she could actually imagine, particularly since it involved an accomplice. In her opinion, her uncle simply wasn’t capable of committing a complicated crime without someone guiding him along the way. “I suppose that’s a possibility. But you can hardly prove it with one old receipt.”
“No, I cannot. But I’ve most of the week left yet.”
“You’re certain he’s guilty now.”
He considered that before shaking his head. “I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t care for your uncle.”
“Few do,” she pointed out.
“True, but only the two of us are responsible for obtaining evidence of his guilt in a serious crime.”
The two of us, she thought, and tried not to grin at his casual reference of them as a team. It pleased her well enough that she would forgo pointing out that she was looking for the proof of her uncle’s innocence, not his guilt. “You’re afraid you’re making mountains out of molehills—seeing things that aren’t there because you’ve already made up your mind about my uncle.”
“Not afraid exactly,” he argued with just enough affronted dignity to have her grinning after all. “It’s something to be aware of, that’s all. Why are you grinning?”
“No reason,” she lied. “I enjoy seeing you use that great sense of yours.”
“I wasn’t being sensible when I envisioned beating him black and blue over dinner last night.”
“You weren’t being original, either. I have that fantasy at least twice a day during my stays here.”
“You’ve cause enough. I want to send you back to Haldon.”
“We’ve been over and over—”
“I said I wanted, not that I could.”
She nodded in understanding. If it were possible, she’d have them both back at Haldon. “I need to see to dinner before the others return.”
Whit shook his head. “You won’t be coming down to dinner again.”
“It can’t be avoided, Whit. My uncle expects me to play hostess, or his version of it.”
He took her arm and led her towards the door. “I’ll handle Eppersly. Stay in your room and lock the door.”
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