“Iam already acquainted with your new staff,” Miss Morgan stated, with an eager light in her green eyes.
The housekeeper’s office was cramped, but welcoming. Sunlight shone through the small window behind the pale desk and brightened the springtime yellow of the walls. The brightness of the room seemed to lighten the red-blonde of Miss Morgan’s hair, partially hidden beneath a lace mobcap.
“Of course,” Jasper replied. “You and Maria shall have access to any room in the house that you require. You’ve been to most spaces in the home, I’m sure, but I daresay there are some you’ve missed. Come,” he urged, leading the woman to the door, “I’ll show you about.”
Miss Morgan inclined her head and absently toyed with the skirts of her maid’s uniform. “Thank you, Your Grace.” The woman smiled, her cheeks puffing with the movement. “Harris and his men intend to patrol the grounds and observe for potential threats at a distance once the evening meal has concluded. Only a few men will remain indoors, ensuring all access points are secure while Maria and I carry out our duties.”
Jasper’s gut tightened as a bout of nerves caught him by surprise.Maria. Despite her terse answers to his inquiries earlier, he’d left her side feeling rather more curious than before. He wanted to know everything about her.
“Here we are. This is my study—” He stilled, his heart thundering and his eyes growing wide as he halted in the doorway.
A dagger stood erect on his desk, its blade dug deep through a folded piece of parchment and into the wood beneath. Jasper’s heart stumbled in his chest.Francis.
Jasper sped to one of the large garden-facing windows beyond his desk and examined the latch and sash for tampering.Locked and secure.
“Blimey,” Miss Morgan breathed. “Is that a new letter?”
Jasper’s lips thinned as he inspected the other window. “I’m afraid so.Damn. This one is secure as well.”
He returned to Miss Morgan’s side before his desk and withdrew his handkerchief. “I was here this very morning, writing correspondence. Naught else appears to be out of place. How did the blackguard get past these alleged superior staff that are meant to prevent this very thing from happening?”
“I imagine we ought to ask them,” she returned. “Your windows are easily accessible from the gardens but, as you say, the windows are secure. Mayhap Francis was given a key to your door and took advantage of a change in shift.”
“Hell,” Jasper said gutturally.
With a quick step forward, he wrapped his handkerchief around the knife’s handle and wrenched it from his desk’s surface. Alarm twisted distressingly in his gut.
“Damned inconvenient,” Miss Morgan muttered. “You’ll have to re-finish that, now.”
He set the blade aside and carefully unfolded the parchment, protecting his hands with the kerchief.
Fellow,I kNow thee.
…
[For]a knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver’d, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch… Draw, you rogue: for, though it be night, yet the moon shines; I’ll make a sop o’the moonshine of you: draw, you whoreson cullionly barbermonger, draw.
Sodding hell.He would need to write again to the magistrate.
Miss Morgan leaned forward to sniff at the parchment. “Mmm,” she hummed. “Yes, that is laurel water, for certain. Ought we to keep this as evidence?”
Jasper shook his head. “I shall pen a duplicate. I cannot risk anyone touching it by accident.”
“Understood. I’ll fetch Harris.”
She darted from the room, and Jasper quickly copied then tossed the parchment into the fire.
* * *
“Miss?”A soft voice pulled Maria slowly from sleep. “Miss Roberts?”
Maria blinked the bleariness from her eyes, her sleep dissipating as awareness took its place. Bubbles of eagerness rippled through her abdomen, and a grin stole over her lips. Her assignment! Heather will soon require relief from her shift at Jasper’s.
“Thank you, Louisa,” she said to her maid. The woman was worth every ha’penny that Maria paid her to keep her secrets. “Would you be so good as to bring me a tea service, please?”
“Of course, miss.” She curtseyed, and silently left the room.
Late afternoon sun shone in through her windows, lending a yellow hue to the deep purples and blues that filled her bedchamber.
