Julia, though, knew none of that, and Alec was too wild with impatience to explain. “Stop it,” she exclaimed. “What are you doing?”
“Julia,” he said, practically vibrating with the need for action, “I need to find that trunk. Now.”
A cool hand touched his. “We’ll look over here,” said Cressida. She took the candle from him. “Julia, perhaps you could look over there.”
Alec sucked in a deep breath to get a better grip on himself. “Yes, Julia, please.”
His sister still stared at him aghast, but at Cressida’s suggestion she slowly nodded. “All right.” The room grew darker as she moved off with her candle.
“What does it look like?” Cressida tucked her hair behind her ears and looked around the circle of light they stood in. “Goodness, there are a lot of trunks in here.”
Alec looked at her, standing in the middle of the stuffy attic with cobwebs in her hair and dust streaking her gown, not questioning his urgency or motives, but just ready to help—and he felt his chest tighten. There wasn’t another woman in the world like her. He had fallen, completely and irrevocably. “It’s leather,” he said. “Reddish brown, about so large, with my name painted on it.”
She glanced at the dimensions he sketched with his hands. “Officers take a lot of baggage,” was her only reply before she turned and started poking through the piles of stuff behind her. Incredibly, Alec felt a small smile cross his face, and then he joined her, borrowing the candle from time to time to get a better look in some shadowed corner.
After half an hour, Julia’s voice called out from the far eaves. “I’ve found it.” She sneezed, the sound muffled in the cluttered room. “I think.”
Alec wound his way through the attic to her, Cressida close behind him. His heart seemed to pause in his chest as he raised his candle over the small, grimy trunk, darkened now with dust but very definitely his old campaign trunk. He had carted it across Spain, Portugal, and into Belgium, learning to send most of his baggage ahead with a servant while keeping the most necessary items with him in this trunk, which was small enough to carry over one shoulder or on the back of a saddle.
He knelt down in front of it, jiggling the latch out of instinctive habit more than conscious memory. It had been dropped in a river outside Oporto, he recalled suddenly, and the latch had stuck ever since. For a moment the intervening decade fell away, and he felt again the relief at opening the trunk to see his things safe after all. Just as he hoped they would be now. Julia and Cressida huddled behind him, holding the candles up to illuminate the contents as he lifted the lid.
It had been packed in a hurry, and clearly not disturbed since; a spare waistcoat was crumpled across the top, and when he removed it, the rest of the contents were all a-jumble, as if they had been dumped inside with no thought or care. No one wanted to waste time packing up a traitor’s effects, he thought, lifting out shaving items, stockings, a dented flask. He took out a small tin lantern, useful for checking on his horse in rainy weather, and lit it, leaving the shutters wide open for more light.
“What are you looking for?” Julia whispered. Cressida murmured something to her, and she didn’t ask again. Alec ignored them both, too concentrated on his task.
He found his writing portfolio, the red leather cracked and dried. A small pot of ink, also dried up. He set everything aside in a growing pile on the floor. With increasing despair, Alec dug through the trunk, past candle stubs and spare buttons and dirty linens, stiff and musty. It wasn’t here. It must have been overlooked, forgotten or misplaced, even stolen—and then all would be lost—
Cressida saw his shoulders stiffen as he uncovered a small book, and unconsciously she held her breath. Was this what he sought? Slowly he reached in and took out the book, which she could see now was a journal. Her stomach twisted as she remembered the trouble her father’s journal had unleashed. She groped for Julia’s hand and pressed it, watching anxiously as Alec flipped open the cover.
For several minutes he paged through the book. She saw pages of writing, a few sketches, sometimes a column of numbers. Once a dried flower fell out, still vivid red. His expression somber, Alec picked it up and tucked it back into the book before turning more pages. With great difficulty Cressida resisted the urge to fidget, and bit her tongue to keep from bursting out with a dozen questions. Julia was wiggling one foot impatiently, but also was holding herself in check. As their nerves grew tighter, he only seemed to grow more deliberate. When he sat back on his heels and stopped to read a page, she almost jumped up and snatched the book away, even though she had no idea what he was looking for or where it might be.
Finally, just as she couldn’t bear it anymore and opened her mouth to ask, he flipped the pages to the back of the book. There was a letter there, folded and sealed and slightly wavy, as if the paper had been wet and then dried. Carefully he slid one finger beneath the seal and unfolded it, setting down the journal without a second glance. Cressida and Julia looked at each other and hardly dared breathe, waiting as he read.
From her position opposite him, Cressida could see his face as it slowly changed from grim and tense to an expression of abject grief. Whatever was in that letter, she didn’t want to know; the bottomless sorrow in Alec’s eyes was wrenching to behold. When he closed his eyes and bowed his head,
