The display area rested at eye level, a wooden back framing it.
“What is that?” Evelyn asked, pointing to it.
“It’s just a display,” he said, but she shook her head, leaning in for a better look. While Asher stood looking above it, she was even with the opening.
“I wish I had a light,” she murmured. “But there is more here. It looks like a sliding panel.”
“A what?” he exclaimed.
“The proportions don’t match,” she said, “and look – there are subtle tool marks near the molding.”
She leaned forward, pressed the side of the wood, and smiled in satisfaction when it popped open.
Revealing a folded, yellowed piece of paper hiding underneath.
26
“Asher? You might want to see this.”
Evelyn stepped back, out of the way, and Asher had to take a minute to realize she meant that he should peer into the display niche, and not at her.
It was so hard not to stare at her.
He had thought that marriage would mean becoming bored, itching to find another to speak to besides his wife.
Yet in his case, he found it was the exact opposite — that all he wanted was more of Evelyn, that the more he knew her, the more he wanted her.
As her fresh scent swirled around him, he closed his eyes, telling himself to focus on what she was showing him, not on her scent or on the way her bottom looked as she leaned over, her dress pulled tight around her.
He was struck in that moment by how strongly he wanted to make it clear – to her and anyone else who might wonder – that she washis, that he would do anything to make sure another man didn’t touch her, didn’t even look at her the way he was.
Then she moved out of the way, and he saw what had caught her attention.
A piece of paper. Folded. Yellowed. He reached in and pulled it out, shocked at what he was staring at when he opened it.
Evelyn leaned up to read it along with him, and, unable to take the time to even leave the room to find somewhere better to sit, he folded his legs beneath him and took a seat right there on the wooden floor of the gallery, his ancestors looking on from their places in their portraits among the landscapes and other statues that dotted the room.
His breath caught in his throat at what was before him, his hands beginning to tremble ever so slightly.
For Asher knew that writing nearly better than his own.
He had read it, again and again, as he had pored over documents, ledgers, all of the information he needed to properly run the estate.
“What is it?” Evelyn said. “What’s wrong?”
“My father wrote this,” he said, his voice flat.
“Are you certain?”
“Completely,” he said. “It’s all there. My father discovered that Lord Norwood — or possibly his predecessor, that part is unclear — was involved in seditious dealings with a foreign power. If this came out, not only would Lord Norwood be tried for treason, but all of our dealings with our allies would be at risk. To know that this level of discussion was occurring could be catastrophic.”
Evelyn leaned over his shoulder to get a better look herself.
“It has all of the details,” she murmured, the slight puff of her breath on the back of his neck distracting him. “It even says where to find the correspondence that proves he was selling intelligence to a foreign agent. Look, there’s a list of accomplices.”
“That’s why Norwood wanted the diamond,” Asher said.
“Knowing this, I would have thought that he was the one who had stolen it,” Evelyn said. “But how could that be possible if the note is here, in our house?”
