How Not to Marry an Earl Page 13

  She gave him another searching look and he regretted making such a strident defence of a man who he’d claimed he barely knew. ‘Even if he is the picture of health, it makes no sense to haul him from the other side of the globe and drop him into a seat in Parliament,’ she said. ‘If there is no one nearer, then perhaps it is time to admit that the Stricklands have had a good run but are ended.’ Then, she smiled at him. ‘Of course, you would not have come here, had they done that.’

  ‘Very true,’ he said. Truer than she knew. A few days ago, he would have told her how heartily he had wished he’d never heard of the Earl of Comstock. Now? He was not quite so sure.

  To distract her, he pointed at the painting. ‘Where is he standing, do you think?’ In the shadowy background of the painting, they could see what appeared to be stone walls and some sort of statue, perhaps a saint or an angel, and a greenish tinge to the light, as though it were filtered through coloured glass. ‘Could it be a church?’

  ‘None I am familiar with,’ she said. ‘It does not look like the one in the village.’

  ‘It was a bit late for repentance, if he committed fratricide,’ he replied, then stared at the picture’s background. ‘Help me take it down.’

  One on each side, they reached up and lifted the portrait down from its hook, then struggled it to the floor. Then he reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and spat into it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, startled.

  ‘Some necessary cleaning,’ he said, dabbing at the paint with the dampened cloth. ‘It will do no harm. But there is something I must see.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you can make it worse,’ she said and pulled a smaller, lace-trimmed hanky from her own pocket, spat in a most unladylike way and offered it to him.

  Between the two linens, he managed to remove the grime from the area of the canvas that most interested him. Behind the murderous Earl there appeared to be a raised dais and a long marble altar. In the centre sat a large book, lying open on a metal stand. ‘Do the Stricklands have a family Bible?’

  ‘In the parlour,’ she said.

  ‘I think it is time that we pay it a visit,’ he said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  She had been right about him.

  Although he did not have her depth of knowledge about the family’s past, it had had taken only one nudge from her and he had found his way to the next step in the puzzle. Nor had she known that it was possible to clean an oil painting by expectorating on it. Or that it was a good thing to nourish plants with dead fish.

  The depth of his understanding was awe-inspiring.

  Now he stood before the family Bible, staring down at the handwritten record of births and deaths at the front, as if searching for some key there. His finger traced names, pausing now and again as if they held some meaning for him and were not just an extension of the history lesson she had given him in the portrait gallery. Then he began flipping pages, as if suddenly remembering his reason for being here. ‘May I see the key, please?’ He held out his hand for the paper and she retrieved it from her pocket.

  He set it against a single page and looked through the windows. ‘Not the printed text, then. The spacing is all wrong.’

  Then he flipped to the back and the empty signature that had been sewn in after The Revelation. He glanced up at her. ‘Sermons?’

  She shrugged. ‘More than one earl has fancied himself as a bearer of the Lord’s truth. Having read some of their work, I have my doubts. But there is one in particular that will interest you.’

  He read through some of the pages, making occasional faces of disgust or disbelief. Then he came to the one she had thought of. ‘Averill Strickland?’

  ‘The Blue Earl’s brother,’ she confirmed.

  ‘Have you already read it?’

  She shook her head. ‘I decided it might be nicer to do it together.’ The thought surprised her. Her sisters often chided her for her need to be right, to be first, to be the cleverest one in the room. But with Potts, it had not seemed so important.

  He glanced at the writing desk, then said, ‘I doubt we will need to write the message down, for we are both likely to remember it verbatim.’

  She nodded, surprised again at how ready he was to put confidence in her and how easily they understood each other. Then, very deliberately, she remembered the face of the woman in the picture that was resting in the breast pocket of his coat. It did not matter that they were perfectly suited. He was a man of honour and had promised himself to another. For his sake, she hoped that Prudence was as smart as she was beautiful and worthy of his loyalty.

  He had fitted the paper key over the handwritten sermon and began to read. ‘To the right and noble man who finds my message.’ He paused to glance at her with a smile. ‘Let greed not be your guide in looking for what is left of the things right and fully left to you. Seek ye first the kingdom of God.’ He looked up again, waiting for her opinion.

  ‘That is all?’

  ‘There are some windows that do not align,’ he said.

  ‘Turn it over and read again.’

  He flipped the page. ‘Three. For. Too. One.’

  She glanced over his shoulder. ‘They are meant to be numbers.’

  ‘So it would appear.’ He turned the key over again. ‘And on this side, we have right, left, right and left, hidden amongst the text.’

  ‘It is a pattern of some sort,’ she said. ‘Doors or windows.’

  ‘Rooms,’ he suggested.

  ‘Bricks in a wall.’

  ‘Stairs,’ he added. ‘There are so many possibilities that it will be difficult to choose one without some sort of starting place.

  They both sat, thinking in silence.

  ‘How much of the house existed, while he was alive?’ he asked.

  ‘None of the parts we are inhabiting,’ she replied.

  ‘So whatever this pertains to would be happening in an older, unfamiliar part of the house,’ he concluded. ‘And you did not recognise the statue that was in the background of the portrait.’

  ‘It is nothing I have seen here,’ she said. ‘And my sisters and I explored every room we had access to.’

  ‘Were any of them fitted out as a chapel? Because Cyril has suggested that we seek first the Kingdom of God. I can think of nothing else that would fit the bill.’

  She had been hoping that he would arrive at any other conclusion than that one. But it was the logical answer. ‘There was a chapel in the oldest part of the house. It would have still have existed when Cyril was alive.’

  He frowned at her. ‘That does not sound very encouraging.’

  ‘Come with me and I will show you the next problem we face.’ She led him out of the parlour, up the main stairs and back into the central wing. At the end of it she paused to get her bearings, then turned right. And then, to the end of the hall and down what had been a main staircase, some time long before she was born.

  Potts trailed behind her, gaping in amazement at the high ceilings and many doors. ‘Did the family need all this space?’

  ‘My family gives little thought to what it needs,’ she said. ‘There used to be many of us. Enough to occupy a castle. Then a manor would have sufficed. Then a large house would have been enough. Now we could manage with a few rooms in London.’

  She had led him down the stairs and through a ballroom that might have been useful if they’d had enough money for lavish entertainments. Now it stood as a sad and empty testament to a once-great family.

  She escorted him to the end of the room, beneath the musicians’ gallery, to a stone wall that did not match the other three, and a Gothic archway. ‘The Stricklands no longer need so much space. But we never throw anything away. Not a button, not a book, not a room.’

  She put her hand on the stones that filled the arch, which were just as dark and heavy as the res
t of the wall. ‘We do, however, occasionally brick them up.’

  ‘This is the chapel?’ he said, pressing his hands against the wall as if he expected it to move.

  ‘I believe so. I have no proof, of course. But that is what we always imagined it must be.’

  ‘You closed it off.’

  ‘My ancestor,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed.

  ‘As a country, England has sometimes disagreed as to whether we should be Catholic or Protestant. One of the Earls of Comstock decided it was best that we be neither.’

  ‘How refreshingly humanist,’ he said, slapping his palm against the wall in frustration. ‘Shall I find a hammer and get to work?’ He slipped out of his coat and prepared to roll up his sleeves.

  She opened her mouth to object, then closed it again, overcome with a sudden desire to see his arms bared and taking physical action. Then she shook her head both to clear it and to indicate the negative. ‘Let us not be so drastic until we are sure of what we are doing. I am not even positive that this was the chapel. For all we know, knocking a hole here will lead us directly out into the garden.’

  He gave her a sheepish smile and slipped back into his coat. ‘Or into another room that was built over the remnants of what had been here. Forgive my impetuous nature. We Americans pride ourselves on being men of action. But I must not carry the behaviour to excess.’

  A man of action with the heart of a scholar and the instincts of a chess player. She swallowed, thinking of the easy way he had lifted her up into the chimney and on to the billiard table the night before. He was staring at the wall, giving her an excellent view of his flawless profile and running his long, deft fingers over the seams in the joinery. Now he turned to pace off the length of the room, frowning as he calculated the dimensions in his head.

  If he’d thought that he had escaped by giving her the tools to her own pleasure last night, he had been utterly wrong. Though she knew it was unwise, she still wanted him every bit as much as she had before.

  He looked back at her now, totally unaware of the thoughts that were foremost in her mind. ‘Are there architectural plans for the house and its additions? I doubt such grand work could be done without them. And for the life of me, I cannot manage to envision how the parts of this house that I have seen of it can connect to make the whole.’

  ‘It is very confusing,’ she agreed. ‘If plans exist, they are likely to be in the library with everything else of value.’

  ‘Let us go and look,’ he said, glaring a challenge at the sealed doorway. ‘I refuse to give up when we are so close.’

  * * *

  As they retraced their steps back through the baffling labyrinth that he’d inherited, Miles tried not to look at the swaying hips of the woman in front of him. She had still made no mention of what had happened in the billiard room. But he, at least, was thinking of it more and more, as time passed.

  The search for the diamonds should be paramount in his mind. His trip into the village yesterday had aroused far more curiosity than expected. It was only a matter of time before someone described the Earl to one of the servants and the whole house realised who he was. If they could manage to find the stones today, he might be gone by morning without being forced to reveal any difficult truths.

  And that would give him one last night with Charity Strickland. Like the search for the missing jewels, he had uncovered far too much of her to walk away unsuccessful. If the point of last night’s experiment had been to bring matters to a satisfactory conclusion, it had failed. Judging by her screams, she had been satisfied. He had not. His desire for her had not been blunted by sleeplessness or exercise, though a few hours spent reading the accounts of the Comstock finances had done much to depress his spirits.

  Of course, it had also given him ideas. With a progressive peer in control of the land, it might be possible to turn the tide of failure and salvage some of what had been built. Though he could not stay to do it himself, it might take some time for his replacement to be found. Until then, he might give Charity the power to implement her own ideas in his absence. At the very least, he could write her a formal letter from Comstock, assuring her that she had nothing to fear from him. Her future would not be some bargaining chip to refund the estate.

  They had come back to the front of the house and she was talking to the butler and ordering that tea and sandwiches be brought to the library so that they could continue their research. They would be alone together in a room full of erotica, at the far end of the house in a location that was more remote than the rather risky choice the billiard room had been.

  Disaster was inevitable. And yet he could not manage to be bothered by it. They would be together all afternoon, either in the library, or investigating corners of the house that no one visited without a reason. What happened would happen and he would deal with the consequences afterwards. Whatever it was that he felt for her, it was futile to resist. He would follow her to his own damnation, if that was what she wanted. For today, at least. Tomorrow, he might be gone.

  She had completed her orders and started down the hall to the library. But before he could follow her, Chilson stepped into his way. ‘A moment, Mr Potts?’ The butler managed to phrase the words in a way that was both a question and a demand.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, smiling at the servant as Charity went on towards the library, oblivious.

  ‘Last evening, there was a commotion that disturbed the staff. It sounded rather like a woman’s scream.’

  ‘Perhaps it was after I retired,’ Miles said, trying to look innocent.

  ‘When I went to investigate, Miss Charity informed me of a difficulty in the billiard room,’ Chilson said, his face expressionless. ‘She had been startled by a rodent.’

  ‘How surprising,’ Miles responded. ‘Are rodents often a problem at Comstock Manor?’

  ‘We have mice, occasionally,’ the butler admitted. ‘But she is not normally bothered by them. Therefore, I suspect it was a rat.’

  ‘Really,’ Miles said.

  ‘A rather large one, I should think. One that has recently found its way into the house and is unaware of how hard the staff work to keep the family safe from vermin.’ There was a slight constriction of distaste around his mouth as he looked at Miles. It did not bode well.

  ‘That is most commendable of you,’ Miles said, feeling much less confident than he had before.

  ‘The footmen have been equipped with large hammers. I have informed them that, should the rat alarm her again, they are to hit it with all their might and evict it from the house,’ he said, with a final nod.

  ‘An excellent idea,’ Miles said, trying not to imagine the feel of a hammer blow, delivered without warning. Then he added, ‘We all want what is best for Miss Strickland, I am sure.’

  ‘It gratifies me to hear it, Mr Potts,’ Chilson said with a smile, stepping aside to let him pass. ‘Please inform Miss Strickland that the tea tray will be there directly.’

  ‘Thank you, Chilson.’ Then Miles turned his back on the servant. After waiting a moment to see if he was struck down where he stood, he walked down the hall to the library.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘More tea, Potts?’ Charity smiled as she filled his cup, trying to catch his eye.

  ‘Thank you,’ Potts said without looking up. He had spread the plans she had found for him out on the library table and was trying to fit them together, one on top of each other like overlapping pieces of a puzzle. ‘I thought I was clever, but I can make little sense of this.’

  She put down the teapot and picked up a pencil. ‘We are here. Here are the main stairs.’ She found another page and slid it part way under the first. ‘This is the old house and fits here.’ She pulled it out again and crossed out several of the rooms. ‘So these have been torn down, replaced or repurposed.’

  She looked up to see i
f he agreed with her assessment and found his attention remained resolutely on the papers in front of them.

  Had something happened in the last few hours? She would not have described him as overly familiar, over the course of the morning, but there had been an easy camaraderie between them that was lacking now. Since coming to the library, his manners had been perfect and his behaviour unexceptional.

  Too perfect. Too unexceptional.

  She had not expected to be swept from her feet the moment the door had closed. But she had hoped that there might at least be a smile to prove that he still enjoyed her company.

  She reached across the table for another plan, brushing her arm against his coat sleeve. As she did so, she was sure she felt him flinch.

  She dropped the paper on top of the others. ‘This is the second floor. Where the bedrooms are.’ She made a large X over the Tudor Room. ‘You are here.’ Then, she tapped the pencil repeatedly on the paper and stared at him. ‘This is my room.’

  He looked up slowly, his eyes smouldering. ‘I realise that.’

  ‘And what do you mean to do with this knowledge?’ she asked.

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ he said, looking away from her again.

  ‘After last night?’

  ‘Last night, we were careless,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘The servants are aware of what is happening between us.’

  ‘And they know better than to question me on it,’ she said.

  ‘So they questioned me, instead,’ he replied.

  ‘Are you afraid of them? If so, I will tell them to leave you alone.’

  By the fierce look he gave her, she knew that she had spoken wrong. ‘I am not afraid of the servants. I am in agreement with them. You deserve better than a man who has nothing to offer you and does not mean to stay longer than one more night.’

  ‘One night?’ Did he really mean to leave so soon? ‘Are you not even going to attempt an audit?’

  ‘I see no point in it,’ he said. ‘Even if I could account for every silver spoon and stick of furniture, it would take months to arrange for the sale of them. I do not have that kind of time.’