“You clever man!” she said excitedly, kissing him deeply in appreciation, “you clever, clever man!”
Just as suddenly, she rolled off him, bounding to her feet as she marveled at how obvious it was. Another purpose!
“No, come back here,” Kesgrave said, tugging her hand. “I don’t feel lauded enough.”
Chuckling lightly, she said, “No, I cannot imagine you ever do.”
But she allowed herself to be drawn back for another consuming kiss and found herself genuinely tempted by the ardor of his response.
“You clever man,” she breathed on a sigh as his fingers tugged her night rail up higher.
With gentle determination, she extricated herself from his embrace and fetched his dressing gown from the chair on which it had been discarded. She tossed it to him. “Come on, let’s go.”
He sat up—but to straighten the mess she had made on the bed, not to don his robe. Showing only mild curiosity as he returned the loaf of bread to the tray, he asked where they were going.
“To the housekeeper’s room,” she said impatiently. “Do not worry about the crumbs. We can clean them up later.”
Of the two propositions, it was impossible to tell which one horrified him more. Stiffly, he said with some of his old imperiousness, “My dear former Miss Hyde-Clare, you may welcome the advent of vermin into your bedchamber, but I have many reasonable objections that I am happy to list in great detail if you do not find the prospect innately repellant.”
“As much as I adore listening to you pontificate interminably on tedious subjects, your grace, I simply do not have the time right now to indulge you,” she said. “Come please. We must hurry.”
Kesgrave restored the wedge of Wiltshire to its plate and placed both on the tray. “The Black Death, which was spread by rats, killed several million people in the span of only a few years.”
“You are stalling,” she said.
“I am, yes,” he said agreeably, “but I am serious as well. This is an old house and we are constantly fighting pests.”
Smothering a sigh, she leaned over the bed and piled the ham slices neatly on the tray, then wiped gently at the faint greasy stain on the bedcover. “There,” she said, brushing the last few crumbs into her hand, “now we can return the tray to the kitchen on our way to search Mrs. Wallace’s rooms. I applaud your efficiency. Now do let’s go.”
“Given my stance on traipsing through the servants quarters, I would expect you to anticipate my aversion to searching the housekeeper’s rooms,” he said.
“We are looking for a murderer, not a rasher of bacon,” she countered tartly.
“I don’t believe the distinction between the two is as great as you think it is, as both can wait until morning,” he said. “Please ring for Joseph to collect the tray and tell me why we are searching Mrs. Wallace’s office. As I know establishing yourself with the staff is one of your goals, I am compelled to warn you that rifling through her private possessions in the middle of the night is not the best way to go about it.”
Never one to continue the fight after the cause had been lost, Bea tugged the bell pull and settled herself again on the bed. “In light of your ridiculous theory regarding Mr. Réjane’s proposal—and speaking of establishing oneself with the staff, calling your housekeeper a dotty female is also not ideal—I realized that he might have had another purpose in coming to Kesgrave House to speak with her. In that event, the proposal was merely a pretext to gain him entry into her rooms. Why would he want access to her rooms? To hide something in a safe place.”
Smiling at her reasoning, he called her conclusion outrageous but conceded it was still more plausible than Monsieur Alphonse’s nurturing a hopeless passion for Mrs. Wallace. “What do you supposed he secreted away?”
“Ah, yes, what do you suppose, your grace,” she asked with pointed annoyance, “for it could be almost an infinite number of things. If only someone would let us investigate the answer right away rather than requiring us to twiddle our thumbs with tedious impatience until respectable calling hours.”
But if she had hoped to heighten his interest in the mysterious hidden object, she failed miserably. He displayed no curiosity in the unknown item and only nodded absently as she began to speculate. What her comment did awaken, however, was a sense of challenge, and he was determined to do everything he could to alleviate the tedium of waiting.
“For I cannot allow my wife to expire from boredom,” he said softly as he pressed her against the pillows. Carefully, he took the glass of champagne from her grasp and settled it on the night table in noticeable contrast to the heedless way she had knocked his own drink out of his hand.
“Not unless you are lecturing her on the Great Plague,” she added as caveat.
She felt his smile on her skin as he pressed kisses against her neck. “Not unless.”
Already, she felt her boredom easing. “What about Joseph?”
An inarticulate murmur was his only response.
“He will knock at an inopportune time,” she said breathily, her ability to think rationally slipping away as sensation began to overtake her.
“I will leave the tray outside,” he said reassuringly, although he demonstrated no indication of doing so. Indeed, he seemed to sink further into her as he raised the hem of her night rail.
“Oh, yes, that will keep the Black Death from your door,” she said on a light laugh before succumbing entirely to her husband’s attentions.
Chapter Fifteen
Denied the opportunity to burst in on Mrs. Wallace in the middle of the night, Bea was reluctant to bother her now that Kesgrave had deemed the hour appropriate for an invasion.
“It is not an invasion,” she said sharply as he escorted her down the
