LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER ONE

      “EXPLAIN TO ME again why you get to perch there chomping on an apple—and I do mean chomping—while I’ve been put to crawl around on my hands and knees, tapping at the woodwork while Tubby keeps insisting on licking my face. Not that I mind, do I, Tubby?” Valentine Redgrave put down the small hammer so he could tug on the spaniel’s ears. “There’s a good old dog. Fat, decrepit and with the fetid breath of a mongoose, but I love you, truly I do. You’re a good old dog.”

      Lady Katherine Redgrave employed her tongue to push her most recent bite of apple against the inside of her cheek, looking much like a squirrel gathering up nuts for the winter. She was sitting on the back of one of the enormous leather couches in their brother Gideon’s study at Redgrave Manor, her bare feet pressed onto the cool cushions, her long, lithe body still clad in her simple cotton night rail and dressing gown, although it had already gone noon.

      “He knows when you’re being facetious,” Kate pointed out to the sibling closest to her in age of her three brothers, which had made him both the best friend and chief tormentor of their youth. “You could have said good dog, good dog all day last year, when you were so careless as to trip over dearest old Tubby and tumble down the stairs, taking Duke and Major along with you, poor animals. Tubby still knew you were angry. Everybody did. After all, you howled worse than the hounds.”

      Valentine sat back on his haunches, wiping at his damp face with his handkerchief as the spaniel watched, tail wagging in ecstasy and ready to launch himself, tongue first, at his master again. “I broke my damn leg and all three insanely concerned mutts kept leaping on it until you could pull them off, or has that part of the incident escaped your memory?” he grumbled, and then went back to crawling and tapping, tapping and crawling.

      “It still aches, you know, when the weather’s about to change, although I suppose you’d think that a good thing. So you can make sure you have your umbrella handy, except you like getting soaked to the skin, don’t you? In any event, being a weather soothsayer was only amusing the first time I bet Jeremy it would rain by dusk before he figured it out, and then blabbed my secret to everyone. I still want to know who left the gate open at the bottom of the stairs so the dogs could get up them in the first place. Because I could swear I’d closed it.”

      Kate examined her half-eaten apple, as if looking for the next logical area to bite, which was safer than looking at Valentine, and much safer than having him look at her. “It’s a petty man who holds a grudge. I’m certain the person is most exceedingly sorry.”

      “And you damn well should be, instead of talking me into crawling around Gideon’s inner sanctum looking for secret passages.”

      Kate slid down the back of the couch, her night skirt billowing out around her as she plopped onto the cushions. “I never said it was me. I?” She waved the apple about in frustration. “I never could get the straight of that one, no matter how Miss Pettibone tried to drum it into my head. I know—I never said I forgot to latch the gate.”

      “You never said you didn’t,” Valentine responded reasonably. “You don’t lie, Kate. You just don’t tell the truth if you can find a way around it.”

      “Well, that’s true enough. You’ve gone beyond the length of the couch now. You want me to help you push it back against the wall?”

      “I told you nobody puts a secret passage behind a hulking great piece of furniture. Scrape marks would show on the floor every time it was moved, and be a dead giveaway. There’s probably some sort of switch somewhere that operates a lever that opens some cleverly disguised door. Maybe hidden in all that carving around the fireplace—not that I’m saying there is a lever, or a door.”

      “No. I checked there. I checked all the obvious places before you arrived to bear me company. Now I’m working on the unobvious places, obviously. But if you’re so certain I’m wrong, why did you volunteer to help me?”

      “Again,” Valentine corrected, unnecessarily dusting at his clean breeches, for Redgrave Manor was run by Dearborn, the butler, and Mrs. Justis, the housekeeper, who oversaw a multitude of well-trained servants. No bit of dust or dirt had dared to even think of being caught out lingering anywhere on the premises for at least thirty years, not even beneath the couches in the eighteenth Earl of Saltwood’s study. “That’s why I am helping you again, since you’ve been getting into scrapes all your life, left to your own devices. But the answer to that rephrased question is both obvious and simple. I’m not helping you. I’m keeping you out of trouble.”

      “How so? Why would I be getting into trouble? Gideon asked me to do this.”

      “Really? The way I was told the thing, our clever new sister-in-law asked you not to go hunting the journals, at the request of our big brother, which meant you immediately made plans to return here and do it. But that got you to leave London, which is what Gideon wanted Jessica to get you to do any way she could, since you were demanding to remain after the wedding and things could have turned dicey. It was only when he realized you might actually find something that big brother began to panic like an old woman.”

      Kate didn’t know if she should be amused, surprised or angry. She quickly decided on amused, knowing Gideon’s bride had truly tricked her. A person could admire that. “And that’s why you’re really here, instead of London? To make me stop?”

      “Clearly not, or I wouldn’t have spent these last miserable minutes crawling around on the floor. We’re still to look, but you aren’t going to be searching alone. Those were my marching orders from Gideon—don’t let that idiot girl out of your sight. My God, Kate, what would you do if you found those infernal journals our father and his cohorts kept?”

      She moved her shoulders a time or two, trying to act nonchalant, as if she hadn’t yet contemplated that possibility. “I don’t know. Read them? Write to Gideon at Yearlings and announce I’ve found them?”

      “Exactly. You’d do both, and in that order.”

      Kate grinned. She never could fool Valentine. “Are they really that naughty?”

      “They don’t describe the Society’s lawn parties, I’ll tell you that much. I’ve read the single one we found, and one was enough, more than enough, even for me. Now, let’s get this couch back into place.”

      Sticking the apple between her fine white teeth once more, Kate pushed with all her might, helping to slide the couch against the wall. It wasn’t easy to do, which was why she hadn’t yet searched the area, and in the end, Valentine had to do the majority of the pushing. “You’re right. Nobody would hide a door or secret panel behind that monstrosity. That really cuts down on my list of possible hidey-holes, doesn’t it? And in a house with seventy rooms, I can’t tell you how that cheers me. Where shall we search next?”

      Valentine glanced at the mantel clock. “No more today, Kate. I’ve got a friend arriving from London in less than two hours.”

      “Please say it’s not Jeremy. He keeps looking at me with his mouth hanging open. I can nearly see his tonsils.”

      Valentine chuckled as they left the study, arm in arm. “He can’t help it. He’s mad for you. Except when he’s afraid of you, which is most of the time.”

      “That’s ridiculous. Why would he be afraid of me?”

      “I don’t know. Probably because I said you’d eat him for lunch.” Valentine grabbed Kate’s elbow and turned her toward the large pier glass in the hallway. “Look at you.”

      “I

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