Page 104 of The Twelve Dates of Christmas
Edward gave a look that suggested she was just the type to gamble her grandmother away, but he nodded his agreement with her hypothesis.
“Would you like to do the honors?” said Kate, motioning toward the chest.
“Would you?” he asked.
“I don’t mind,” she said.
“I don’t mind either,” said Edward.
“You do it,” said Kate.
She thought it might be good for Edward to do something assertive.
Edward used the combination and the lock clicked open. Inside the chest, the key to the concealed door lay on a purple velvet cushion. He took it out and held it up like he’d just discovered the Holy Grail.
Edward was tall but not tall enough to reach the lock without the stool. Clearly not wanting to be the one to break up the writhing couple on the stool, he handed the key to Kate.
“Smooth,” she said, and raised her eyebrows.
After several tries at reasoning with them, Kate pushed at Mandy and Todd gently until they flopped off the stool, limbs locked around each other, and landed on the floor with a dull thud like a couple of sandbags. This did nothing to dampen their ardor; on the contrary, their rampant thrusting only increased.
Kate stood on tiptoes on the stool and slipped the key into the lock. The door clicked open and Edward was through it before Kate had even climbed down off the stool. She called to Todd and Mandy that they were going to the next room, but they didn’t appear to hear her.Oh well, she thought.That’ll be a nice surprise for the next team.
“And then there were two!” said Kate as the door snapped shut behind her.
Edward looked green.
The next room was furnished to look like a study, with bookshelves, a heavy mahogany writing desk and chair, table lamps, and a chaise longue. There were ornaments and trinkets above the fireplace and a crimson smoking jacket hanging on the back of the door, which was not concealed this time but made from the same oak as the paneling on the two walls free of bookcases.
A fleeting thought that Matt would love this room passed through her mind, and Kate banished it just as quickly and wondered instead how Richard was getting along with his date. She hoped he was having as much luck as she was.
At the end of the chaise stood an old leather-bound steamer trunk with Paris stickers all over it. It was locked, and Kate surmised that it was for this that they needed to find a key. The action of intent looking seemed to suit Edward, as it negated the need for conversation, and he became less jumpy.
They worked in amiable silence, Kate having written this date off as a complete nonstarter. Probably for the best, she thought; what with all the upheaval of moving, she would find it hard enough to find time for her budding relationship with Richard, let alone add another potential lover into her schedule.
Within the first couple of minutes Edward had found the first key in one of the desk drawers. The key didn’t fit the lock. A moment later, Kate found another key in the smoking jacket pocket. That didn’t fit either. The third key, which Edward found in a small gilded sarcophagus on the mantel shelf, did fit the lock, and they opened the trunk to find another smaller trunk inside.
Kate was beginning to enjoy herself. And without Todd and Mandy simulating sex in the corner, even Edward relaxed and became relatively chatty. One of the keys they already had fitted the second trunk, but the third key didn’t open the third case—which was an old picnic basket with a parcel label tied to the handle and the wordsA Moveable Feastwritten on it.
Edward and Kate began an organized search—almost as if they were a team, Kate mused. Edward noticed a creaking floorboard beneath the tapestry rug in the center of the room. Carefully they rolled it back and found a floorboard that lifted easily. Kate reached her hand into the space and brought out a wooden box, which held the key to the picnic basket, and the key that Kate had found in the smoking jacket opened the fourth case housed within it.
The fourth case contained a small wooden box about the size of ajewelry box and, unlike the others, it also contained postcards, which, as they inspected them, were all black-and-white images of the Ritz in Paris in the 1920s.
“This must be the final box,” said Kate, and Edward agreed.
They scanned the room.
“It must be hidden in the one of the books,” said Edward, in a rare moment of assuredness.
Kate glanced at the floor-to-ceiling bookcases.
“Where do we even begin?” she asked as much of herself as of Edward.
Edward ran his finger along his lower lip.
“It can’t be a random book,” he announced. “The postcards must be a clue; look for any books pertaining to Paris.”
Kate was suddenly excited. They took a bookcase each, working methodically along the shelves, pulling out anything that hinted at being at all connected to Paris. All the classics were there: Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, the Brontës. All hardbacks and gold lettering like her dad’s oldReader’s Digestcollection, in bottle green, red, and navy blue.
