Page 48 of Noble Scoundrel

“And you, m’lady,” he replied with another bow of his head.

Before turning to continue to the dining room, she cast a casual, almost dismissive, glance over Hale.

Unfortunately, with his back now to his friend, he had the freedom to stare back at her in a way that was far from casual or dismissive. The potency in his darkened gaze angled straight through her center. Her lips parted as she sucked in a swift breath. As his gaze dropped to her mouth, the hard bunch and release of the muscles in his jaw made her belly flip.

Right when she thought she’d gotten the upper hand, he snatched it back again.

Turning away, she crossed the hall to the breakfast room, feeling his gaze warming her back the whole time. As she stepped out of sight, she could have sworn she heard his low-textured laughter.

Rather than irritating her, the sound warmed her insides even more.

Chapter Sixteen

The stacks of journals, most of them worn and faded, took up nearly half of the desk in Katherine’s study.

Before leaving Lincolnshire, Katherine had instructed a servant to gather their father’s extensive collection of volumes from his study along with some of the personal items of both parents she wanted to keep near. The large trunks came with them to London and were safely kept in the empty master bedroom. Katherine had suspected that at some point she and Frederick might like to go through everything.

After breakfast that morning, when she’d gone to retrieve them from her father’s belongings, she hadn’t realized there would be quite so many. With ransom likely eliminated as a motivation and her brother’s idea of setting a trap not even being considered, Katherine was left with very few avenues of investigation. All she could do was hope her father’s journals might provide some clues or direction. Now, seeing all of his work collected in one place, she realized the extent of the task she’d set for herself.

She decided first to organize them chronologically so she could better review those pertaining to the work he’d been doing in the last years of his life since that seemed the most likely place to start looking for any connection between Charles Blackwell’s work and the current threat.

Though tedious, the project was exactly what she needed.

It had been nearly two days since she last encountered Hale in the entry hall the day of Mr. Newton’s initial visit. Since the bodyguard mainly contained his activities to the ballroom, they rarely crossed paths. Someday soon, she’d have to visit the space to see exactly what he and his trainees were doing to make it sound as though they might be trying to bust through the floor.

At least she could be assured he hadn’t left the house again, as Foster understood to advise her if that happened. She knew from Frederick that his bodyguard also visited with the children rather frequently, though most often later in the day. Katherine told herself keeping her own visits with Frederick and Claire to the hours when Hale was closed up in the ballroom wasn’t at all due to any desire to avoid the man.

She simply preferred the way the sunlight angled through the third-floor rooms at that time of day.

Katherine was thrilled to see her brother starting to once again enjoy some of his previously passionate pursuits. He had begun work on a new maze and she hoped the project would keep him from dwelling on the fact that he was essentially confined to the house for the time being. But she knew his current contentment wasn’t likely to last very long. Her brother needed the freedom to explore, which meant she needed to get to work on resolving the identity of their enemy.

Picking up the first journal, she began by scanning the date noted at the top of the first page and set about arranging the journals in chronological order. At the end of the morning, she had set aside nearly two dozen journals that spanned dates old enough as to make them unlikely to be connected. This reduced her area of focus to a dozen volumes, which she intended to review in depth.

It shouldn’t take too long.

#

---