He shook it off and opened the right top drawer of his father’s desk. Quills and ink bottles and other writing accoutrement greeted him. The old duke had been a great writer. Correspondence was important to him. Kit smiled as he looked at the well-worn instruments that spoke of his father’s craft.
He opened the second drawer on that side and found a few dogeared books and another ledger. He moved to the opposite side and opened the top drawer, expecting to find more of these utterly mundane and completely moving artifacts of his father’s day to day life.
Instead, when he opened the top drawer, he found half a dozen leather-bound books stacked neatly in a pile. Not printed works on farming or management like the ones from the opposite side of the desk.
These looked like…
He opened one and found it filled from edge to edge with his father’s familiar scrawling hand. Kit caught his breath. This was his father’s diary.
He flipped to the end, where a silken piece of fabric marked its place, and discovered the last entry was dated less than a week before his father’s death. The hand was shakier, less sure.
Kit pushed the journal away on the desk and stared at it. The pain, which he had succeeded in keeping at bay during the time since his father’s death, rushed back to him now. Washed over him. Became unbearable, a mockery of what he thought he had overcome.
He bent his head, feeling every wave of it and knowing it would now wash him away, out to sea where there was no coming back from it.
There was a light knock on the door, and as he lifted his head to shout at the unknown person to leave him be, it opened and revealed Sarah.
For a moment, time stood still. He stared at her, lovely and soft, and the pain faded just a fraction. But not enough.
“What is it?” he barked, unable to temper his tone.
She jumped at the sharpness of it, yet she still took a hesitant half step into the room. “I-I’m sorry, Kit. Last night we spoke about a new riding habit for Phoebe and—”
He jerked his face away. A riding habit? He vaguely recalled the conversation. Something about increasing his rapidly growing sister’s allowance for clothes and other necessities. It was part of what he’d come in here to look at today, compare his father’s allowance for that expense to her needs.
And now that duty felt so tiny and unimportant when his father’s journal was sitting on the desk, screaming at him in the old duke’s voice.
“I will deal with it when I deal with it,” he snapped, slamming a hand on the desk and reveling in the fact that the physical pain momentarily erased the emotional. All too momentarily.
Her lips parted a little and then she inclined her head slightly. “Of course, Your Grace.”
He flinched. When they were alone, she never called himYour Grace, always Kit. But his tantrum had thrown her back to propriety, a wall between them.
“I’m sorry to have pushed the subject,” she continued, her voice trembling. “I will leave you. Good day.”
He shoved to his feet as she turned. “Wait.”
She stopped. He could see from her tight shoulders that she wanted to keep walking like she hadn’t heard him, but she didn’t. And that meant he had a chance.
“I’m…I’m sorry, Sarah,” he said as he came around the desk toward her. She did turn back to him now, and he could see wariness and empathy mixed on her expression. “I should not have spoken to you in such a fashion.”
She stared at him a moment, then reached behind herself and closed the door. She folded her hands before her and said, “Why did you?”
He glanced back at the desk, at the journal, and the pain spiked high in his chest again. “It’s just…I…he…”
He sighed. It seemed he could not form the words he needed to say. So he turned and swept the journal up. He handed it over to her without explanation.
She looked at the leather-bound volume, then opened it slowly. She stared at his father’s words and then up to his face. “Oh, Kit,” she whispered. “His diary?”
He nodded and took a deep breath. “Diaries, actually. There are at least six more in the drawer, and I would assume those are only the ones from this year.”
Her eyes went wide and she glanced down at the thick book. “Seven books for less than half a year?”
“He was a prodigious writer,” he explained with a smile. “He wroteeverythingdown. A life of lists is a life well lived, he used to say.”
Sarah’s face broke into a wide smile. “I like that saying. I have been known to make a list or two in my day.”
He wanted to smile with her, but instead he took the journal back and smoothed his fingers over the supple leather surface. She watched him a moment, then stepped closer and reached out to cover his hand.
