Page 30 of The Blood of a Baron

His shaking right hand moved the page to the ledger pile, pretending to set it on top of the stack. He shuffled some pages over the letter and brought them to his lap, folding the letter down to size under the stack.

His stare intent on Laney, making sure she didn’t glance upward, he slipped the letter into his pocket.

Something Laney could never see, never know existed.

The anger in his limbs wasn’t as easy to hide away as the letter. Tremors still shook his hands, the heat running through his body making him want to rip off his coat.

He stifled it as best he could. Breath after breath.

Damned hard to do when Morton’s words had shaken him to his bones.

The blasted pomposity of her brother.

The book Laney held in her hands thumped to the floorboards and she gave an exaggerated sigh. She turned from him, scooting along on the floor to the last jumbled pile of papers and books in front of the overturned desk.

Wes pretended to flip through the pages on his lap, not that he could see anything through the red clouding his vision.

The same papers flashing in front of him, again and again until he could make out numbers, letters.

“Here!” A yelp burst from Laney’s lips and she jumped to her feet, waving a book in the air. “Here. It’s here.”

Wes scrambled to his feet, the papers on his lap spilling onto the floor. He strode across the room, stopping next to her, looking down at the page she had open in the book.

Morton’s elaborate scrawl ran along the top edge of the paper, twisting down the side of the page.

My dearest flitting dove—

Remember the cheroots? Grand times we had. That is where the box is, my silly monkey. All my devotion.

—Morton

“The cheroots?” Wes asked, looking down at Laney. Damn, but she shouldn’t smell this good after a day spent with dusty papers. But she did. Citrus and lavender wafting up from her hair.

“Yes, the blasted cheroots.” An aggravated groan left her mouth. “I should have guessed it at the first.”

Wes exhaled a long breath. “All this time and the book was in the last pile? And we could have saved the whole day searching for the note if we’d just looked where you thought it was?”

Her head shook. “It was just one of the possibilities I had in mind. But even if we had found the box first, I would have searched these papers just the same. Searched for his message to me.” She closed the book, hugging it to her ribcage. “I needed this. Needed to keep what little Morty had left of himself for me.”

She flipped to the spine of the book, her fingers running over the words embossed on the side, the golden letters half worn by fingers during the years. “St. Leon, Godwin. I never knew.”

She didn’t make motion to move. Seemingly stuck clutching onto the last memories of her brother. Of her father. He’d died when she was fourteen, and her mother had died when she was but a babe. There wasn’t even some far-flung cousin to inherit the title.

Morton truly had been the last of her family.

Wes cleared his throat. “So, where are the cheroots?”

Her gaze snapped up to him. “Come, I’ll show you—it’s where Morty discovered he could hide things from our governesses.”

She set the book carefully onto a high empty shelf and then picked up the lit lamp she’d been dragging along on the floor next to her. Spinning on her heel, she strode out into the main hallway. While Wes thought she was going to veer up the stairs to a room above, she stayed straight instead and went downward into the rear stairwell.

Down a level and into the kitchens.

She set the lamp onto the well-worn rough-hewn table in the middle of the kitchen and then went to the dry larder box set against the stone of the house’s foundation.

“Down here?” Wes asked.

Sinking down to balance on her heels, she unlatched the front of the box and looked over her shoulder at him. “Each of our governesses was super strict, but they were also—to a one—deathly afraid of our cook, Mrs. Hendricks, and would never come into her kitchen. An iron spine, that one. But she adored Morty—and me by default in that I was Morty’s sister.”

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