“Have you found something out?” he asked without preamble once the door was shut.
Goodness, he looked sodifferentwithout his beard. Her fingers itched to stroke the line of his jaw.
She stifled the desire. “Not precisely. But I think it would be best if we searched some of the rooms today.”
“Searched the rooms?”
“Yes. The de Younges’ office, for one.”
“Do you think they’re involved in Davis’s flight?”
“Perhaps.” She brushed her lips with her fingers, thinking. “Lady de Younge does seem attached to Davis. And she mentioned in casual conversation eleven different people and places straight from his letters. There’s a significant connection here—I’m certain of it.”
“All right. Can you distract her for a time?” Arthur’s serious face was set as he looked at her, as though the request were difficult for him to make. “I can search the office, perhaps even try her bedchamber, if you can keep her busy.”
Could she do it?
She looked up at Arthur, hesitant, wishing. His eyes were a swirl of color, vibrant as the landscape, vivid as the sharp rush of desire that had unwound inside her body when he’d put his mouth on her skin in the stairwell.
“I can try,” she said.
That evening, Arthur made his way carefully down the hallway past the sitting room in which the ladies had assembled after dinner. Gentlemen were meant to partake of port and cigars in one of the drawing rooms, but Arthur had excused himself with a vague reference to his wife.
Didier Thibodeaux had given him a rather ribald wink at that, but Arthur had ignored him.
Lydia had positioned herself facing the sitting room’s door, and when he passed by, she looked up and gave him a brief, cautious nod.
God, he admired her. He could see from the pallor of her face and the tense set of her shoulders that she would rather be anywhere but there, exposed to the view of a roomful of strangers. And yet she did it anyway, because she believed it was the right thing to do.
He did not know if he’d ever been that brave—that willing to be vulnerable—in his life.
He made his way to the end of the hall, where Lord de Younge’s office was situated. The room was neat and organized, and it was not especially difficult to suss out where de Younge kept his important papers. Arthur flipped through stacks of estate bills—the de Younges were looking a bit thin this year—and piles of correspondence, but found nothing that related to Davis.
He was on the point of sorting through the quills in the uppermost drawer when the door to the study came open, and he froze.
It was Lydia. She entered the room in a quiet whirl of white skirts and red hair, her face still turned back the way she’d come as though someone might be on her heels.
“What’s happened?” Without waiting for a response, he began to stuff papers back into drawers, trying to replicate where they had been before his assault upon the desk.
“I could not hold her off!” She crossed the room and came to his side, her hands fluttering nervously. “Lady de Younge, I mean. She said something about going to seek out her husband—she wants to play a parlor game, for heaven’s sake! I fear she will look for Lord de Younge in here if she does not find him promptly.”
“Hell,” he said succinctly. “Can you listen at the door while I put everything back?”
“Yes, of course.” She hurried back to the door, which she’d shut behind her when she’d entered, then promptly whirled back to him. Her eyes were blue and enormous and terrified. “I hear someone!”
“Lock it,” he ordered in a whisper. He flicked through papers, ensuring that he had not disarranged the chronological order.
“Wh-what?”
“Better they think we’re trysting in here than that I’m searching through their things. If they toss us out of the house, we’ll lose our best chance at finding Davis.”
She threw the latch. “Can I help you somehow?”
“No, I’m almost—” There. He’d done it. Everything was back in the drawer.
He crossed the room in a handful of strides, coming up behind her to listen at the door as well. His palm went unthinkingly to the bolt that Lydia had thrown home.
Her hand, he realized, was still there. Where he had expected to encounter metal, he found her fingers instead. Those long fingers—capable as she grasped a quill, endlessly delicate as she held a crystal glass—
