The Lady By His Side

by Stephanie Laurens

  He lifted the box, came and fetched the volume of house plans, and carried both to the shelves.

  She followed.

  After he’d slid both box and tome back into their places, he straightened, picked up the rolled map of the estate, then caught her gaze and arched an arrogant brow. “Logically, we should start with the house and work outward. Let’s begin in the basement.”

  She met his eyes and smiled intently. “That sounds as good a place as any.”

  Chapter 8

  Armed with Antonia’s copy of the house plans, they consulted Blanchard and, under his aegis, ventured through the green-baize-covered door and down a set of stairs into the servants’ hall, beyond which lay the kitchen and a warren of other rooms.

  “We’d like to start at the lowest level of the house.” Sebastian looked at Blanchard. “I assume the cellars are in use?”

  “Indeed, my lord. If you will come this way?”

  They followed Blanchard into the kitchen, where preparations for the evening meal were in full swing. The cook and her helpers saw them and froze, then downed tools and bobbed curtsies.

  Antonia calmly smiled. “Don’t mind us. Do carry on.”

  Blanchard led them down the long room, past the curious staff, and into a smaller storeroom. “The cellars are quite extensive, but we use only the nearer sections.” Blanchard halted and waved to a heavy door set into the wall at the end of the storeroom. “You will need these.” Blanchard turned to where lanterns sat on a bench and proceeded to light two. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

  Behind the butler’s back, Sebastian exchanged a look with Antonia. “This is one of those instances in which we’ll know what we’re looking for when we see it.”

  Blanchard nodded, then turned and handed one of the lighted lanterns to Antonia. “If you would, my lord—the door’s not locked.”

  Sebastian lifted the latch and swung the heavy door wide, noting as he did that not only was the door not locked, it didn’t even have a lock. Nor was there any sign of a bolt. Reaching for the other lantern, he frowned. “This door is never locked?”

  “No, my lord. As long as I’ve been here, there have been no locks or bolts on it, and, indeed, we’ve never seen the need.”

  Sebastian raised his brows. “What about Ennis’s wines and spirits?”

  “Ah—they are stored in a room in the cellars, and that door is locked. The wine room is to the left at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “Just so we’re thorough, might we have the key to that door?” Antonia asked.

  “Of course, my lady.” Blanchard hauled out a key ring and started searching through his many keys.

  Two minutes later, armed with the key to what Blanchard had assured them was the only locked door in the cellars, Sebastian led the way down a long flight of worn stone steps.

  “Judging by the dip in the middle,” Antonia murmured, “these date from medieval times.”

  Sebastian grunted. The atmosphere in the cellar was cool, but not damp; the air smelled musty, but not oppressively so. Beyond the area lit by their lanterns, the darkness was absolute.

  He stepped off the last stair and halted. He raised his lantern and played the beam around, illuminating a collection of stores arranged on wooden shelves, along with a group of wooden crates holding apples and root vegetables. Swinging the beam to the left, he saw the locked door. “Let’s try the wine room first.”

  “Yes—oh!”

  He spun in time to catch Antonia—or rather, to bodily break her fall. She’d lost her footing and pitched forward. She slammed into him, breast to chest; instinctively, his free arm clamped about her, and he clutched her close.

  His senses rioted; valiantly, he beat them down. Her eyes, wide and shadowed in the diffused light, locked with his. For several heartbeats, they froze—both intensely aware, the air around them inexorably heating…

  He forced in a tight breath. With it came some semblance of control. Moving slowly, he bent his knees and set her on her feet, then he released her and forced himself to take a step back.

  “Thank you.” She sounded breathless. She smiled apologetically at him. “These half-boots are new, and the soles are still slippery.”

  He swallowed a grunt. The front of him felt aflame, not just with heat but also with longing.

  He stepped around her to the door to the wine room, slipped the heavy key into the lock, turned it, then pushed the door wide. He shone his lantern into the space, then led the way in.

  Wine racks were arranged in four rows stretching down the long, narrow room, forming two aisles, each with bottles stacked on either side.

  “Look.” Antonia gripped his sleeve. She’d directed her lantern toward the room’s far end. “Barrels!” Twenty or more barrels were stacked end-out against the rear wall.

  They both started forward, but chose different aisles—her to the left, while he went right.

  “And there are more barrels here.” She halted, playing her lantern against the wall of the aisle in which she stood. “Gunpowder comes in barrels, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. Check every barrel. Tell me if you find anything that’s not marked cognac, armagnac, whisky, or some other spirit you recognize. And tap every barrel—the sound will be different if it’s filled with powder rather than liquid.”

  They spent the next minutes checking the barrels stacked at various places around the room.

  Eventually, she joined him in examining the bulk of the barrels, those stacked along the rear wall to a height higher than his head. She placed her lantern at the end of a rack, as he had; the overlapping beams illuminated the wall quite well.

  They peered at labels and tapped and listened.

  At last, she stepped back; he was crouching by her feet, sounding out the lowest row of barrels. Her hands on her hips, she looked down at him. “I haven’t found anything but spirits.”

  “The same. And that’s the last of them.” He braced one hand against a barrel and started to rise.

  The wall of barrels creaked and shifted.

  Half smothering a squeal, Antonia grabbed his shoulders and hauled, attempting to drag him away from the barrels. She caught him off balance and sent him and her stumbling and careening into the side wall.

  He fetched up with his back against the cold stone, and she landed hard—body to body—against him.

  And again, he fell victim to his slavering senses and reacted as those senses decreed; before he registered what he was doing, his arms had risen and locked her against him.

  The impulse to crush her closer yet, to appease the welling, insistent ache, flared hotly.

  “Oof!” She blew out a breath, fanning the fine tendrils of black silk that framed her pale face. Then she focused her wide eyes on his. “Sorry. I thought you were about to get buried.”

  His gaze had locked with hers; feeling as if he was all but drowning in the silver of her eyes, he fought to compress his lips against a searing need to find out what hers tasted like. After a fraught second, he managed to reply, “No. The barrel I leaned against shifted a trifle—that’s all. The stack’s stable.”

  Even to his ears, his voice sounded rough, deeper and more gravelly.

  The battle to set her away from him was significantly more difficult to win than before.

  He succeeded. Just.

  He eased past her and turned to look up the room. He set his hands on his hips, drew in a tight breath, and pretended to survey the area as if searching for anywhere they’d overlooked, while inside, he wrestled his demons back into their cage.

  He was supposed to be protecting her—even from himself. At least for now.

  She, too, had fallen to studying the room’s contents again. “We haven’t found anything here, but regardless, might they have disguised the gunpowder? Perhaps put it into old brandy casks, for instance.”

  He drew in another breath, forced his wits to function, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. That would increase the risk that so
meone—thinking it was brandy or whatever else—might steal it, or open it, find gunpowder, and raise the alarm.” He reached for his lantern. “And whoever brought the gunpowder here had no reason to imagine anyone would start actively searching for it. Better to just hide the gunpowder barrels somewhere—either somewhere sufficiently secret or among other barrels.”

  “By the latter theory, this is the most likely place the gunpowder would have been hidden, but it’s not here.” She retrieved her lantern, and side by side, they started up the room toward the door.

  He glanced back. “There’s no sign of any barrels being recently brought in or removed, either.”

  “Well, the door is locked, and it’s a heavy old lock, so they—whoever they are—would have to have had access to the key.”

  “If Ennis was directly involved, then they would have had no problem getting the key.” He held the door, then followed her through. “If by ‘here’ Ennis meant inside the house, then this was the most likely place to hide any barrels.” He hauled the door closed and relocked it.

  After pocketing the key, he raised his lantern and played the beam into the surrounding darkness. “It’s possible they didn’t bother trying to hide the barrels among others, but simply hid them around some corner down here. We’ll have to search the entire area—even if you don’t see barrels, look for any sign that they might have been here. Any sign of recent activity.”

  They spread out and quartered the cellars, which, once they moved away from the storage areas immediately around the bottom of the steps, proved to be largely empty. The floor was paved with stone flags throughout, and their footsteps echoed hollowly.

  The beams from their lanterns marked their progress, but between them, silence reigned. Until they met once more at the bottom of the cellar stairs.

  Sebastian looked into Antonia’s eyes, steel gray in the lantern light. “Where else in a house are barrels found?”

  She pulled a face. “No doubt there’ll be one or two in the storerooms around the kitchen, but unless we’re looking for just one barrel, I can’t think where more could be hidden above this level.”

  He considered, then said, “I can’t imagine an amount smaller than several medium-sized barrels being threat enough for Ennis to have felt compelled to report it.”

  “In that case”—Antonia raised her skirts and started up the stairs—“let’s check the kitchen storerooms just in case, then take a closer look at the house plan and see if there are any other places in which several medium-sized barrels might be concealed.”

  With a grunt of agreement, Sebastian followed her up the stairs.

  Antonia took the lead in examining the barrels in the various storerooms, but found nothing beyond two barrels of herrings, one of vinegar, and a large vat of cider. She was glad of the minutes of being in charge; the exercise demanded she keep her mind focused on their search, allowing her senses time to recover from the jolts she’d given them.

  In deciding to batter through Sebastian’s armor-plated control, she hadn’t considered how such an endeavor would affect her. In truth, the thrill of those moments—the anticipation of when, exactly, he would break, and what would happen next—was distinctly addictive.

  Deciding she needed a little more recovery time—and she needed to be careful he didn’t realize her actions were deliberate, so a longer period of perfectly innocent behavior on her part wouldn’t go astray—as they emerged through the green-baize-covered door into the front hall, and found it empty, she glanced at him. “There’s a morning room that no one seems to use.” She pointed to the closed door at the front of the hall, opposite the drawing room. “Why don’t we go there and study the house plans for anywhere else we should search?”

  “Good idea.”

  He walked at her shoulder down the front hall, reached past her and opened the door, then followed her inside and shut the door.

  Although no one was using the room, the curtains had been opened and a small fire was burning. A well-padded sofa faced the fireplace with a low table before it. Antonia sat on the damask and spread the four sheets of her copy of the house plan on the table.

  The cushion next to her depressed as Sebastian sat beside her. “I really can’t see anyone carting several medium-sized barrels upstairs.” He leaned forward to study the plan, then reached out and drew the sheet representing the ground floor closer. “Is there anywhere on this level that would make any sense as a place to store gunpowder?”

  “The gun room?”

  “Not for a whole barrel, let alone two or more.”

  They pored over the relevant sheet. Antonia tapped her sketch of Cecilia’s recent addition; she’d found the plans for it stuck into the back of the tome of house plans. “What about Cecilia’s new conservatory?”

  “Too humid.” He paused, then said, “But there might be a storage area underneath it—one accessible from outside.”

  They asked Blanchard, only to be informed that the conservatory was built on a solid base that contained the latest type of heating pipes connected to the kitchen stoves. They retreated to the morning room and, standing before the low table, resurveyed the plan of the house.

  Sebastian humphed. “Let’s agree that no one would have hidden barrels of gunpowder anywhere upstairs. Quite aside from the difficulties inherent in ferrying heavy barrels up and down either the main stairs or the servants’ stairs undetected, and subsequently, the very real risk of the barrels being discovered while here, it’s hard to see why, with the many alternatives apparently available”—he pointed to the outbuildings Antonia had marked on her plan—“our villains would have chosen to hide the gunpowder inside the house, let alone upstairs.”

  “Agreed. So let’s start on the outbuildings.” All were at the rear of the house. Antonia gathered up her four sheets and refolded them. “Let’s try the stable first.”

  They did and found nothing at ground level, but Antonia insisted on climbing the ladder to the extensive loft and searching there.

  Sebastian gritted his teeth and followed her up the ladder. He gave up trying to keep his gaze from her trim ankles, lovingly encased in her leather half-boots; with her skirts held up, said tantalizing ankles were more or less directly in front of his eyes.

  He consoled himself with the thought that that was better—less arousing, ergo less painful—than allowing his gaze to drift higher.

  Predictably, no villain had hauled barrels up to the loft, although as there was a hay door and a winch, he had to admit it wasn’t such an inaccessible hiding place as he’d thought.

  The trip back down the ladder was less of a trial, given he descended first and kept his gaze away from her.

  Briskly, she led the way onward—through the barn and the milking shed, both deserted at that time of day, and into an apple store. In all the buildings, he checked for concealed cellars or locked rooms, but discovered nothing to excite their interest.

  “And why would there be any such place,” he said as they emerged from the apple store, the last of the outbuildings, “when there’s so much unused space in the cellars beneath the house?”

  “Hmm.” Antonia glanced at him. “So to our next question. Is there anywhere in the gardens and grounds that might have been used to store gunpowder?”

  He halted, reached into his pocket, and pulled out his sketch of the grounds. He unfolded it and held it so she could see. “Aside from the folly—and we’ll have to check that to see if there’s any room below it—there’s a grotto, and a dovecote, and a ruined chapel just inside the wood.”

  She leaned closer, peering at his sketch; the swell of her breast briefly brushed his arm, but she shifted back immediately.

  Much to his inner self’s disappointment.

  She glanced at the sky, then pointed at the buildings he’d depicted on the sketch. “We can start at the dovecote, then go on to the grotto. By then, the light will have started to wane and the other ladies will have left the folly, so we can check there, then continue on our cir
cuit to the ruins.”

  He nodded and started refolding the sketch. “If there’s water in the grotto, we won’t need to search inside—it’ll be too damp for gunpowder. And going via your route, by the time we reach the ruins, the shooting party should have returned to the house, too.” He tucked the sketch into his pocket, then waved her on. “Come on. We’ll need to hurry, or we’ll run out of light.”

  The dovecote was still in use, but the shadowy lower level proved to be half full of feathers and droppings and devoid of barrels. The grotto did, indeed, contain a pool fed by a small stream; they wasted no time there, but walked straight on to the folly, a typical replica of a small Grecian temple. They reached it in time to see the ladies almost back at the house. A quick examination of the folly’s tiled floor and the outside of the plinth on which it stood convinced Sebastian that there was no hidden room beneath the colonnaded structure.

  They strode toward the wood and the ruins of the old chapel. The soft light of afternoon was well and truly fading by the time Antonia, reinterpreting Sebastian’s somewhat crude and inexact sketch, found the opening of the path into the wood.

  The path wasn’t long and ended in the clearing in which the ruins of the chapel stood, forgotten and forlorn. They halted just inside the clearing to take stock. Judging by the wear on the walls still standing, the rounding and smoothing of the top course of stones, the roof had fallen in perhaps a hundred years ago. Lichens had encroached, forming scab-like patches here and there on the pale yellow stone. The surrounding trees had already blanketed the ground in a thick carpet of red, brown, and faded golden leaves.

  There was a silence there, beneath the louring trees, that was not quite menacing, yet faintly unsettling. Atmospheric, certainly, Antonia thought. As, side by side, she and Sebastian walked forward to what appeared to be the chapel’s front façade, she murmured, “I should mention this place to the other ladies. In stronger light, it would make a good subject for a painting or a sketch.”

  “Hmm.” Sebastian halted just before the arch that was all that remained of the chapel’s entrance. He put out a hand, placed his palm against the side of the arch, and pushed, then drew back his hand and dusted his palm and fingers. “What remains seems stable enough.” With that, he walked beneath the arch into the chapel.