“Does it?” Kit wondered.
Rand waved the inkwell beneath his friend’s nose.
“Whew.” Kit blinked. “It does stink.”
Rand smelled it himself. “Tannin, and something else I cannot identify. I’d forgotten Alban mixed his own ink. Plain lampblack and linseed oil wouldn’t do for his exalted works.”
He set the inkwell outside the room, shutting the door for good measure when the mastiff looked after it longingly.
The three of them watched him sniff all around the chamber.
“This isn’t going to work,” Kit said. “There isn’t an inch of this room we haven’t looked in or over or under.”
“Give him a chance,” Lily said. She set the bowl of meat on the mantel. “Journal, Rex. Find a journal.”
Rand gestured toward the night table. “He hasn’t noticed all those books.”
“He’s not searching for books. He’s searching for a scent. Those books weren’t handwritten by Alban, so they don’t smell of his ink.”
Rex trotted into the sitting room, sniffed around there, and came back.
“Perhaps,” Rand said, “we should lead him to some other chambers. Ones we haven’t searched yet.”
“Give him a chance,” Lily said.
Rex sniffed all around the bedchamber again, jumping on and off the bed twice in the process. The coverlet slid to the floor, and Kit bent to pick it up. “He’s—”
“Give him a chance,” Lily said.
Rex examined the dressing room. Thoroughly. Lily walked to the doorway and watched. “Journal. Journal. Rex, find another journal.”
Returning to the bedchamber, the dog sniffed around once more. Then he stopped before the marble fireplace and sat on his haunches, gazing into it.
He barked once.
The three humans looked at each other.
“He’s done,” Kit said. “He didn’t find it.”
Refusing to believe that, Lily knelt by Rex’s head. He licked her cheek, then looked back at the fireplace and barked.
“He thinks it’s there,” she said. “In the fireplace.”
Rand lifted a poker and stirred the cold ashes. “Nothing. There’s nothing here.”
“Maybe Alban burned it,” Lily whispered, afraid that if she said the words out loud, she might somehow make them true.
“Maybe.” Rand set the poker back in its wrought iron stand with a final-sounding clunk. “I suppose he might have, if he were worried enough that someone might find it.”
Disappointment fisted Lily’s heart. She stepped toward Rand, toward the comforting heat of his body, the comforting circle of his arms.
Would this be the last day she ever felt that comfort?
Rex barked again. And again. And again, gazing at Lily as though he was trying to tell her something but didn’t have the words.
“He thinks it’s in there,” she said with a sigh. “It must have burned.”
“No.” Kit walked across the room, then back, staring at the fireplace. He poked his head into the sitting room, then looked again at the fireplace. “There’s space behind there.”
“What do you mean?” Lily asked.
“Empty space. Maybe a hiding place. I cannot believe I failed to notice it immediately. Can’t you see the proportions are off, in both this room and the next?”
“We’re not architects,” Rand said dryly, but with a fresh note of hope in his voice. “How do we get to this space?”
Kit began feeling around the paneling above the mantelpiece. “There has to be a latch, or a lever, or something…” He moved to the side, running his hands down the wood to the floor.
And there it was. A little snick reverberated in the room, and a panel swung open.
Lily stepped in first.
A secret room. No, a space. It was tall as a man but no more than three feet deep. Just wide enough to step into and access the area behind the fireplace, a nook so dark she couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face.
She heard the soft hiss of a flame being struck. Rand stepped in holding a candle, illuminating the hidden space and its shelves.
Shutting her eyes in horror, Lily turned away.
But she’d seen what was on the shelves. Traps of all sizes, some with steel teeth large enough to capture a man. A bloody saw. Well-used rope. Cuffs. Whips.
And a lone, leather-bound journal.
Rand reached for it and hurried her out, closing the door with a bang.
Taking the candle from Rand, Kit reopened the panel, peeked in, and slammed it shut again.
Lily’s limbs shook. “What—what were all those things for, Rand?”
“I’m not certain I want to know. But I imagine this journal will reveal all.”
“Will you show your father that space?”
He was silent a long moment. “No. Not unless I have to. Not unless the journal fails to reveal Alban’s plan to kill Armstrong, or the marquess refuses to believe my translation.”
She nodded. It was a sound decision. The marquess had clearly loved Alban, and there was no sense disillusioning him more than was necessary. Alban was already dead, after all.
Never had Lily, nice Lily, thought she’d be glad for a man’s demise. “Never say never,” she whispered.
Rand slanted her a glance, then slowly opened the journal and flipped to the final entry. “‘Nineteenth of August, 1677,’” he read aloud before looking up. “The day Alban died.”
“We’ve got him,” Kit said with a smile.
Lily dropped to her knees and buried her face in Rex’s neck, wetting his fur with her tears. After a long moment, she got to her feet, reached for the bowl of meat, and set it on the floor.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
SIXTY-SIX
ALL THE WAY back to Trentingham, Lily and Rand and Kit reminded one another that the journal might not reveal anything incriminating.
But they couldn’t help but believe that it would.
It was late when they arrived, and Lily was exhausted. She’d hardly slept a wink those long nights waiting for word from Rand.
The rest of the family were already abed. After a yawning Parkinson let them in, Rand drew Lily close and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “Go to sleep,” he told her. “You cannot help with this, anyway. In the morning you’ll feel better, and with luck I’ll have good news.”
She
