Returning back the way she’d come, Leah paused at the room with the crates and trunks. She took a few hesitant steps inside, trying to see the details more clearly.
Here, the bed had been dismantled and leaned against the wall to make space for other items. At first, Leah had assumed the objects to be a remnant of Major MacAlpin’s days. But streaks on the floor hinted that things had been shuffled about recently. It was difficult to tell in the dim light.
Fumbling her way around the mass of objects, Leah crossed to the window and folded back the wooden shutters, flooding the room with sunlight.
As she stepped closer, a giant house spider dropped from the window pane, its large body landing with an audible thunk.
Leah squeaked, jumping back, hand pressed to her chest. The spider skittered away with terrifying speed.
Dratted beasties.
Heart racing, Leah shook her head and turned back to the room.
An array of wonders greeted her. Exotic carved chairs and crates stamped in foreign symbols she assumed to be Hindi. The smell of exotic spices lingered, a wisp of memory on the wind.
Sonotthe Major’s items then, but Fox’s collection from his years abroad.
“Madeline?” she called again.
But aside from the spider, nothing else in the room moved.
Taking a step forward, she lifted a particularly beautiful porcelain vase from the straw of an open crate, examining the bold orange, red, and blue of its design. It would look lovely in the barren great hall. She set it down and gave into the temptation to peruse the rest of the room.
One trunk held a stack of beautiful silk brocade curtains. In another, row upon row of Persian rugs nestled together.
Why had Fox left such loveliness to molder?
Perhaps she would talk to him about unboxing some of the items and dispersing them throughout the castle—threads of vibrant, tropical color against the drab gray stone.
However, two smaller trunks near the window illuminated a different facet of Fox’s past.
Leah raised the lid of one to find dresses—beautiful silk ballgowns and the most delicate embroidered muslins, all carefully layered between tissue-paper. Lifting one out, she ran a finger over finely-embroidered flowers in red silk thread.
Though she was no expert, the dresses did not appear to be more than a few years out of fashion. The woman who had worn them was petite with a dainty waist.
Why did Leah’s husband have these items? Who was this woman to him? A lost lover? A wife?
Madeline’s mother, perhaps?
Did these effects belong to Miss Honoria Hampstead? If so, Fox would only have retained possession of her clothing if he had married her. And if hehadmarried Miss Hampstead and Madeline was the result of that union, why not simply state the matter? Why all the secrecy?
It made no sense.
Instinctively, Leah knew that Fox would be justifiably angry were he to find her snooping through his personal effects.
And yet, she knew so little of him and he would give her even less . . .
She felt desperate to understand the hauntedness that clung to him, the brokenness that drove him to the bottle to drown his pain.
She recited this litany of excuses for her snooping as she lifted the lid to the smaller trunk and cataloged its contents. Books. A writing slope. Several corked perfume jars. And, most significantly, bundles of letters, some tied with string and others loosely scattered, as if hands had rifled through them, searching. Leah leaned closer, the scent of jasmine rising up.
Words leapt off the jumbled papers, a snippet at the bottom of one, a greeting on another, the signature of a third.
Dearest love . . .
The world is dreary without you beside me. When shall I see you again . . .
Your ever-loving captain . . .
