As he marched to do her bidding, she giggled. In spite of everything, she giggled. “This is going to work, Rand. I know it.”
Holding one bedpost, he leaned to press a kiss to her lips. “Don’t get your hopes up, will you? Even if we find a recent journal, I’ll have to translate it, and we’ll have to hope it turns out to be incriminating. And then we’ll have to convince the marquess it says what I claim it does—unlikely to be a simple task—and that such evidence merits freeing Bennett and allowing Margery to wed him. We’re a long way from victory, sweetheart.”
“But we’re about to take the first step. I feel it.”
When Kit returned with a bowl of meat, she took Alban’s fancy silver inkwell and held it to Rex’s nose. “Diary,” she said clearly.
“That’s not a diary—” Rand started.
“Hush. I’m going to have him smell diaries, too, and I don’t want to confuse him. One word for a scent is enough.” She fed the dog a piece of meat, then waved the inkwell beneath his nose again. “Diary. Diary.” She fed him more meat, then snapped her fingers. “Down. Come along. You, too,” she said to the men.
Rand barked, eliciting a hoot of laughter from Kit as they followed her.
She hurried back upstairs to the library and through to the small room beyond, Rex trotting by her side. Once there, she took down a stack of Alban’s journals. “Sniff, Rex. Diary.” She opened one and held it under his nose, then another and another. Each time he sniffed a page, she fed him another reward. “Diary. Diary.”
Kit and Rand just looked at each other and shrugged.
After the dog had sniffed a dozen different journals and received a dozen treats, Lily leaned to look into his eyes. “Diary. Find another diary. Now, Rex. Go.”
Without hesitation, the mastiff bolted from the room.
They all ran after him.
Back downstairs, through the great hall, into Alban’s bedchamber. By the time they caught up, the three of them were panting harder than the dog.
“Diary,” Lily reminded him.
He went straight to the silver inkwell.
She released a strangled laugh. “Good, Rex.” She fed him a piece of meat, holding the inkwell out to Rand. “Will you take this out of here? He’ll never find anything else with this in the room. It smells too strong.”
“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. Alban always mixed his own ink. Plain lampblack and linseed oil wouldn’t do for him.”
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. “Diary, Rex. Find a diary.”
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 checked out the dressing room. Thoroughly. Lily walked to the doorway and watched. “Diary. Diary. Rex, find another diary.”
Back in 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 started 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
