Lydia flipped through the pages, holding them this way and that against the light. “They’re measurements,” she said finally, shaking her head. “I can see a mark for scale here—perhaps this is a building or a bridge.” She looked up at him, eyes wide, face mystified. “Could this be some alteration to your rifle scope design?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I ground the lenses myself with a process of my own invention. I do not think he could create another scope, even with the benefit of my notes. But I… I don’t like to think of Davis loose in a city with the prototype.”
She blanched. “These numbers—could they reflect the rifle’s range?”
“Perhaps. I can’t say for sure.”
She had drawn closer to him as they shared the papers, and now she placed a hand on his upper arm. He could feel her fingers,five light points of contact. His focus tightened onto the small square of connection between them, and his body tightened too. His head spun.
He wanted her. He craved her.
It was as though the revelation that Davis had known her name had shone a bright light into the shadowed corners of Arthur’s heart. He did not want her to want Davis. He wanted her for himself, all to himself, and the hell with the rest of the world.
Christ, he was like a child with a toy!Mine, he wanted to say.This one’s mine.
He needed to get out of this room. Proximity to Lydia Hope-Wallace seemed to cause his brain to behave in bizarre and unpredictable ways.
Unlike his brain’s, his body’s response was altogether too predictable, particularly south of his waist.
“Take the papers,” he said. “The invitations as well. We’ll take it all.”
She looked up at him. In the dim light, with the sun slipping below the horizon, all the vivid colors of her were faded: an ember instead of a conflagration. But he knew each vibrant shade well enough that it did not matter. He could see the color of her hair with his eyes closed.
“Won’t Davis suspect something?” she asked. “When he returns? If we’ve taken his papers?”
“He might,” Arthur allowed, “but he won’t know that we were responsible. These papers are the best we have to go on. I say we hold on to them.”
She nodded and tucked the papers into a pocket concealed at her waist by a wide ribbon.
By mutual consent, they searched the remainder of the room.She peered under the bed and washstand; he leaned the mirror away from the wall to look behind it. He ran his fingers along the backs of all the paintings, hoping fruitlessly for a hidden compartment—what he wouldn’t give for a map! With a big X across it, ideally markedDavis’s Secret Hideout.
There was nothing else. Davis had left the room almost Spartan in its cleanliness.
It was peculiar. The Davis that he knew was not slovenly, but he was a bit careless, always dropping things and leaving piles about left and right. Rather like Arthur himself.
Perhaps Davis had changed in this too. There were so many ways in which Arthur no longer knew his brother. He did not know what to make of their discoveries this evening, and his mind reeled with revelations and with Lydia’s proximity.
When they were done, she peeked her head out the door, then whispered, “All seems clear.” In the hallway, he followed closely behind her, and they crept to the servants’ staircase without issue.
They were halfway down the stairs when disaster struck, in the form of a raucous male voice lustily singing “The Fair Maid of Islington.”
Arthur froze, an instant of paralyzed panic. It might not be someone he knew—but if it was—and if they saw him coming out of Davis’s chamber—withLydia—
How safe would she be, if Davis learned that she’d discovered the truth?
Arthur did not know. But he knew he could not let her come to harm.
In the moment it took him to recover from his shock, Lydia leapt past him back up the stairs. “Come up!” she whispered frantically. “He’ll see you!”
The voice was growing louder. “Hell,” he said, “no time—”
And then he grabbed Lydia about the waist with one hand, yanked the pins out of her hair with the other, and pressed her to the wall, burying his face in the curve of her neck.
Chapter 12
… action was now a necessity to desires so much on edge as ours…
—from Lydia’s private copy ofFANNY HILL
