He was so drowsy now that his head was drooping toward his chest. He jolted his chin back up with a jerk. “What were you saying, my pretty?”
“The princess’s letters. Do you have them here? I’dloveto see them!”
He shook his head. “Sold ’em a couple of weeks ago to a chap over in Covent Garden.”
Tess bit back a groan of disappointment. Ellie’s hunch had been right. “What was his name?”
He closed his eyes again, barely able to keep them open. She shook his shoulder, and he roused with a snort.
“Come here and give me a kiss, you little tease.”
“The name of the man you sold the letters to?” she pressed.
He frowned, as if struggling to recall. “Stockton? Think that was it. He gave me fifty pounds and threw in a couple of naughty prints, too. Do you want to see ’em?”
Tess gave him a brilliant smile. “Oh, yes, absolutely.”
“They’re upstairs, in my bedroo—”
He finally succumbed to the sedative. His head rolled back and he started to snore gently.
Triumphant, Tess stood and placed her glass on the sideboard, then headed out into the hall.
Should she leave? She had a name, after all. But Casehadn’t seemed all that certain, and Covent Garden was home to hundreds of print sellers. His muddled brain could easily have given her the name of his tailor, or his barber.
She shot another glance at Case, then swiftly ascended the stairs.
His bedroom was simple enough to find. Where would she keep naughty drawings, if she were him?
A quick search of his clothes drawers yielded nothing, nor were the engravings tucked under his bed. She checked behind all of the paintings on the wall, and then her eye fell on a small drop-front bureau in the corner.
Her father had owned something similar, and she’d been thirteen the day she spied him hiding something in the secret drawer.
Sure enough, the top section of this one opened to reveal the usual assortment of letter compartments and cubbyholes. Tess slid open the top drawer of the lower section and turned her palm upward, searching on the underside of the writing shelf for a metal spring.
There!
She pressed upward, and a hidden drawer slid out of the top section with a satisfying little click.
She peered inside, and gasped.
Case hadn’t been joking when he’d called them naughty prints. Her cheeks grew hot as she shuffled through them, marveling at the acrobatic, and surely anatomically impossible, groupings. One in particular showed a mythological scene, with a handsome satyr doing something rather shocking to a nymph, and Tess felt her heart pound as she realized the satyr reminded her of Thornton.
The name at the bottom of the print confirmed she’d been right to check. The printer was Stockdale, not Stockton.
Horribly tempted to steal all the drawings, Tess took just the one with the satyr. She rolled it up, slipped it into the pocket of her skirts, and went quietly back downstairs.
Case was still sprawled in his armchair, head lolling, and she grinned as elation coursed through her. Poor Case. He reminded her of a golden retriever: blond, eager to please, but not overly blessed with brains.
Satisfied that he would wake with a terrible headache and very little memory of what they’d discussed, she donned her cloak and slipped out into the street.
A dark-painted carriage was coming toward her. Hackneys were often carriages that had been discarded by the nobility, and since there were no identifying crests on the side panels, she raised her arm to flag it down.
It was only as the vehicle drew closer, and began to slow, that she realized her mistake. The carriage was no shabby castoff; the paint was neat, and the horses that pulled it were of prime quality. Their black coats glistened in the light that escaped from Case’s partly open door.
She lowered her arm and, as expected, the carriage passed her by. She caught a glimpse of a dark-haired occupant.
And then she heard a shout, and the carriage clattered to an abrupt halt. Before the horses had even stopped protesting, the door swung open and a dark male figure leapt down onto the pavement. He started toward her, purpose in every long, impatient stride, and Tess was entirely certain her heart stopped beating.
