There was the massive bed where I fell in love with my husband, right in the center. Under the window was my dressing table, long ago emptied. I started there, yanking the sheet and releasing a storm of dust. Nothing rested on top except the large vanity mirror I had no need of. As expected, the drawers were bereft.
I tried to right the sheet, but it slid off the other side, once, twice, three times before I realized it needed a second hand to reach over the top of the mirror without pulling away from me.
Feeling rather guilty that I had caused even more work for the already overwrought servants, I approached Gabriel’s dresser with more caution. I lifted one edge and folded the sheet carefully in half over the top.
Gabriel had always kept the top clear of clutter, but the drawers had been an organized chaos. Over the years, the contents had spread their way across London, to Xander, Davina, and Her Grace—to me. The first drawer had little but a quill, an inkwell, and some parchment.
I slipped that one closed, content to leave those items to a future owner. The sheet caught in the edge of the drawer. Pulling it back open, I gave a gentle tug, but the sheet didn’t budge. A harder yank revealed that it was caught. One last jerk and the problem exposed itself. A false bottom.
My husband had a false bottom in the drawer by his bed. I supposed I ought to have some sort of feeling about that, but it was entirely unsurprising. After slipping out the quill and other items from the drawer, I lifted the wood piece.
Below it was a stack of parchment. And right on top was a yellowed banknote.
WILLIAM
It was a wonder how quickly someone could become essential. She went from stranger, to nuisance, to friend, confidant, lover in days. Now all that was left behind was a dull ache in my chest and a throbbing behind my left eye.
A few days of my foul temper had been enough to scare off even the most determined visitors to my office, Bates included. It had, however, been a very productive few days.
That, of course, led to its own pitfalls. No sooner had Xander’s documents been completed than Kit shoved me out the door toward Rycliffe Place to gather signatures.
In fairness, I had made no fewer than three clerks cry just that morning.
When I arrived, the house was in a state of organized disarray. Servants scurried about with various trunks and paintings, covering furnishings and the like. One of them merely grunted with a head nod down the hall when I asked after Xander.
Peering in a drawing room, I found no hint of Xander. But there was a sense of Celine. In the curtains and settee that hadn’t yet been covered—purple damask in the same tones she still favored. It was the slap of a reminder that I didn’t need.
Next, I passed a music room and a dining room. At last, I found Xander in the study at the end of the hall. This room bore no evidence of Celine. Xander had made it his own. And he wascurrently hunkered on the floor in a little fortress of documents and ledgers.
Though I favored my desk, I was no stranger to the looming and foreboding presence of a perilously stacked document tower. I knocked on the doorframe and he invited me in, not glancing up from his project.
“Xander?”
“Oh,” he said, whipping around to verify the identity of his intruder. “Will! I thought you were… someone else.”
“Just me, I’m afraid.”
“Are those all the documents I asked for?”
“They are.”
“Help me up? I believe I’ve been bent in this position so long that I have lost the ability to stand.”
“Wait until you see the other side of thirty.”
“Oh, good Lord. With any luck, Davina will have given me a fit of apoplexy and put me out of my misery by then.” I pulled him to stand. He had managed to surround himself with piles and spun once, twice for an escape before deciding to step over gingerly.
“Alas, I’ve yet to find anyone who manages to have their apoplexy conveniently timed.”
“If she doesn’t, my mother will manage. She’s been detailing every ridiculous fairy story she can find about Scotland. Did you know that I’m certainly going to be mangled by wulvers and drowned by kelpies?”
“I hadn’t heard that. I’ll miss you dearly.”
“See that you do.” He wandered over to the desk that remained uncovered. It was blanketed by yet more documents. He made a half-hearted attempt to shuffle the piles before picking up the one directly in front of his chair and dropping it to the floor with a decisivethunk.
“Do you need… help? With all of this?”
“I need a drink with all of this. And a large fire. Also, a new sister. Dav is responsible for at least half of these.” He lifted the corner of a stack, letting the pages snap from his thumb in rapid succession. “Do you suppose she’s a changeling? Mother was concerned for my future offspring as well, but perhaps she should look to her own.”
