“A fair point, to be sure.” Arthur rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and then finished wrapping the wick he’d fashioned from threads of his cravat. “All right. ’Tis done.”
He handed Huw his tinderbox, the lengthy wick, and the small incendiary device he’d crafted from a pinch of black powder, strips of bark, pine needles, and padding from the remainder of his cravat. “Remember what I told you. Place it just beneath the window outside the dining room where everyone inside is busy with supper. It will flare up because of the pine needles and make a nice, loud boom. The building’s brick, and there’s no dry shrubbery about, so there should not be any danger of fire. But you’ll keep an eye on it anyway?”
“Of course.” Huw looked slightly injured. “I must say, Bertie’s ideas usually involve less… arson.”
“For Christ’s sake, ’tis notarson—”
Huw was grinning beneath his beard. Arthur scowled at him.
In a few moments, the other man had the bundle placed and the wick lit, whilst Arthur lurked—there was really no other word for it—in the darkness behind a stand of trees. Huw stepped back hastily as the wick caught, and, within moments, the fire licked its way up to the device.
The volume of the subsequent explosive crack was startling even to Arthur, who was expecting it. At the same time, the pine needles caught fire and flared up in a bright yellow-white blaze, producing a thick column of noxious smoke.
It did not take long after that. The window was flung open, and people began to pour out the front of the building to investigate.
Arthur smothered a brief flash of glee at the success of his device and made for the servants’ entrance.
It worked better than he had expected—O Huw of little faith!—for the stairs to the second-floor bedchambers were dark and empty, and he was up them in a trice.
Georgiana met him in the hall. “Can you pick the lock?” she whispered. She was frowning. “I’d thought the door would be open so that the maids could enter and clean, but evidently your brother’s desire for privacy outweighed the demands of hygiene.”
“Aye,” he murmured back. “Pass me a few of your hairpins.” He could make his way around a simple latch, to be sure—it was just a bit of metal. And if it were something more substantial, he could bloody well kick the door in and figure out how to pay for it later.
Fortunately, breaking the door down did not prove necessary. While he worked with dirk and pin, Georgiana fetched Lydia from the chamber she had rented, and by the time Lydia was at his side, he had the door open.
“Go,” whispered Georgiana. “I’ll keep watch from the other room and distract anyone who comes by. Be quiet and quick and go out the servants’ entrance when you’ve finished.”
Lydia did not speak, only flicked a dark blue glance at him before slipping past him into the room. Her skirts brushed his trousers, and her bare arm whispered against his sleeve. He caught her scent, warm and sweet and—what was it? Vanilla? Cream?
He gritted his teeth and put his mind to the task at hand.
Lydia dashed immediately to the small escritoire at the corner of the room, so he perforce made for the wardrobe. It had no latch or lock, and the inside was all but bare. A shelf of linens, a sachet of dried lavender within, and, on the ground, a leather satchel that had his heart racing before he discovered that it held only a few stale bannocks and a stoppered flask. He uncorked the flask and gave it a sniff. Water.
His heart lurched with disappointment, and he turned back to Lydia. “Have you found anything?”
She was bent at the waist as she rifled through the escritoire’s drawers, leaning over the arm of the wooden chair. There was nothing overtly provocative about her pose; her dress, the fabric soft and striped in a pattern of blue and white, covered her nearly to her toes. He could make out her slippers—blue spangles today—and the hint of her stockinged heels as she stood almost on tiptoe.
No, there was nothing salacious about it, which meant there was no good reason for the direction his mind chose to take: Lydia bent over the chair, her skirts around her waist, her hair loose and wild and wrapped in his fist.
“Yes,” she said, and he nearly lost his head entirely before he realized she was answering his question.
He came toward her. “What have you found?”
She stood, her heels sliding back into her slippers. Her eyes were bright. She liked this, he realized—the thrill of discovery, this exploration behind closed doors. “Invitations, mostly—five of them, all signed by Lady de Younge. Do you think there could be some kind of romantic entanglement between them?”
Arthur choked. “I don’t suspect that, no. Lady de Younge was a close personal friend of our mother.”
Lydia tipped her head to the side. “And you think a separation in age makes a tryst between them unlikely? Or do you think it improper? I understand some people quite prefer older women—”
“For Christ’s sake.” He put his hand over hers to take the invitations, rather effectively cutting off her flow of words. “I think it unlikely because she was ourmother’s friend. Give me those.”
The tops of his ears felt rather hot, and her fingers were cool and delicate beneath his, and the excitement of the clandestine search sang in his veins as he touched her. He wanted to keep touching her.
He had not been so close to her since the moment in his drawing room when he had run his thumb along the line of her mouth.
He had not stopped thinking of it.
When she spoke, her voice was just a bit breathless. “They are dated within the last month—I imagine he was at Strathrannoch for most of that time, which is why they seem to have gone unanswered.”
