It was long, large, and shallow, made of wood with a heavy, locked hasp. “The diary must be in there,” Lily said, amazed that they’d found it so easily. “Where do you suppose we can find the key?”
“Where would you keep a key?” Rand asked, almost to himself. Or perhaps he was addressing his brother’s ghost.
“Behind the headboard?” Lily suggested.
Rising to his feet, Kit rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe under the mattress.”
“No,” Rand said. “Alban was more clever than that. It will be in this room, but not anywhere that typical.”
He began methodically lifting objects while Lily checked the headboard and Kit looked for a key tucked into the ropes that supported the mattress. Both of those places revealed nothing.
“Aha!” Rand set down a Blue Willow jar that he’d found on the mantel. He held a wad of cotton that had concealed the key inside.
His fingers shook as he worked the lock.
Please, Lily prayed silently, let this be it.
But when Rand raised the lid, the box wasn’t filled with books. Instead it held an astonishing array of various knives.
Lily stared in horror. “Some of them have dried blood on them.”
“Alban never was very tidy.” Rand’s gesture encompassed the general condition of the room. “Frightening, isn’t it?”
Lily nodded and swallowed hard, her gaze still fixed on the jumble of sharpened steel. Curved blades and straight, serrated and smooth, double-edged and honed to a deadly point. “Perhaps we have no need to find the diary now. This should convince your father that his eldest son had no good in mind.”
A short, harsh laugh rent the air. Kit’s. “I expect not. Alban’s love of hunting was well known.”
Rand nodded. “He rarely carried a firearm, either. Alban liked to kill with his hands. I’m surprised he even tried to shoot Bennett, although I suppose that goes to show his desperation to see the man dead.” He released a pent-up breath. “No, I’m afraid this proves nothing except that my brother was fascinated with knives. I doubt the marquess will find that to be startling news.”
“It seems he was fascinated with killing, too.” Lily shivered, imagining all the creatures that had died at his hands. While she’d never objected to hunting for food, somehow she knew he’d had other reasons. She looked up and met Rand’s eyes. “I believe Bennett. The man who owned this collection wouldn’t hesitate to murder.”
“We still must find his journal to prove it.”
But a careful, exhaustive search of the bedchamber revealed nothing. They spent an hour combing Alban’s dressing room—reaching into his pockets made Lily’s skin crawl—and another turning his sitting room upside down.
Nothing.
Kit plopped into a red-and-gold-striped chair. “We’re missing something.”
“There’s no desk in here,” Lily said. “Where did he write?”
Rand began pacing. “In his bedchamber. At his dressing table. Didn’t you see the quill and ink?”
“But the drawers there were filled with accessories, not paper.”
“Alban didn’t write letters,” Rand said peevishly. “He wrote only in his journal.”
“No,” Kit disagreed. “I think Lily is on to something. Perhaps at sixteen, when you left home, Alban wrote only in his journal. But he died at thirty. Surely he was handling some of the estate work by then. Did he not have a study?”
Rand gave a weak shrug—a shrug that alarmed Lily, because it suggested he might have given up. Could Lord Hawkridge have been right that Alban had stopped keeping a diary? The thought was so disturbing she was afraid to voice it aloud.
“This is the sum total of Alban’s rooms,” Rand said dully. “Perhaps he shared the marquess’s study.”
But Rand’s father was in his study when they went there to search. He looked up from his paperwork, impatiently tapping his quill on the desk as he swept all three of them with a cold gray gaze. “I can assure you,” he said curtly, “you will find nothing of Alban’s in here.”
Lily deliberately smiled, a smile she suspected would have done Rose proud. “My lord, I’m certain that your son, as your heir, would have assisted you in the task of running your estate—”
“Of course he did. He was never a man to shirk his duties.” Lord Hawkridge’s eyes swung toward Rand, as though to say he was one to shirk.
Lily felt her hackles rise. Rand had had no choice but to make his own life—not if he’d wished to survive. And though his life would be changing now, he certainly deserved time to grow accustomed to the idea.
Besides, she could see no need to rush. Lord Hawkridge appeared almost indecently healthy for a man of his age, not that he was elderly to begin with. Fifty-two, Rand had said. And for all they knew, he could live to be a hundred and two.
She forced her lips to remain curved in that smile. “Did Alban do that sort of work with you here in this study?”
“Of course not. I told you, there’s nothing of Alban’s in here. He converted part of the library into a study for himself.” With that, he looked down and scribbled something on one of the papers in front of him.
“Converted part of the library,” Rand muttered as they trooped upstairs. “I suppose his own three rooms weren’t large enough.”
Their footsteps sounded muffled on the woven rush matting that covered the floor of the long gallery. Gilt-framed family portraits lined the lengthy chamber, hung on dark, gilt-trimmed panel walls. Noticing one in particular, Lily stopped.
The painting showed a younger Lord Hawkridge standing behind his seated lady, who held a white kitten on her lap. Her blue eyes looked kind, and Lily liked her on sight. The marquess’s eyes looked…happy, she decided in surprise.
He must have been very much in love.
Lady Hawkridge wore a lovely pink dress and the beautiful diamond pendant Rand now had in his pocket. “I see your mother did love that necklace,” Lily said with a soft smile.
Rand nodded. “Maybe this picture is why I still remember it.”
Beside that portrait, another young
