He set aside the cocoa and spent the next few minutes examining his bedroom walls for a secret entrance, but he noticed no tell-tale crevices to indicate a discreet opening.Nor was there a servants stairs since this was part of the old fortress built at a time when defense was most important and not the ‘inconvenience’ of seeing servants moving from room to room as they cleaned.
Perhaps there was a passage hidden in the fireplace, he mused.
He took hold of one of the fire irons and used it to press along the brickwork on its back wall.Despite the ashes having been properly cleaned out, the fireplace was far from spotless, so he did no more than poke at the bricks.
Nothing.
He wanted to step into the massive fireplace and check it out more thoroughly, but he had just washed up and could not risk getting covered in soot.
A more thorough inspection would have to wait for another time.
“Alex,” Tulip called to him in her sweet voice.“I’m ready for help with my laces.”
He strode into her bedchamber, turning breathless at the sight of her standing there with a smile on her face and her gown slipping off her shoulders.She had done up her hair herself, simply drawing it back and pinning it in a braided bun at the nape of her neck.
Gad, she was a pretty thing.
He’d be a happy man if she smiled at him this way each morning.
But how many mornings would he have if there was a killer on the loose determined to dispatch him as efficiently and cleverly as he had done the prior dukes?
Would the killer harm Tulip, too?
Or had she been purposely drugged to keep her out of the way?
Yes, that was likely.
Why else bother putting her to sleep?
Blessed saints.
Perhaps he was meant to be drugged, too.
But he hadn’t taken any brandy last night, instead eager to read his grandfather’s journal while lying in bed with Tulip.Had his remaining awake reading the journal into the wee hours thrown off the killer’s plans?
What irony that his wretched grandfather might have saved his life.
“Tulip, did you have something other than the hot cocoa last night?”
“No, nothing more after our supper.Why do you ask?”
He shrugged.“You were unusually slow to wake up this morning.I thought you might have eaten something or had a drink of something that upset your stomach.”
“No,” she repeated, so he let the matter drop.
She might have taken something during their meal then.
He easily recalled what each of them had eaten because the meal was a single course and rather simple.
Delicious, too.
But they ate the same thing.
They even drank the same wine at supper.
Alex had investigated hundreds of crimes in his relatively short career, succeeding in solving many of them because of his cool demeanor and ability to concentrate on the facts instead of getting caught up inhisemotions concerning the crime.
How was he to dismiss all feeling and think with cool clarity in this situation?
