Perhaps it was time to find out why.
She’d suspected for some time there was a good deal more to this business with Uncle Jarvis and Lord Godfrey than she knew. If she intended to outwit them, the time had come to do a bit of investigating.
Lucy’s dark gaze met her cousin’s blue one. “I think, dear cousin, it’s time we followed Lady Felicia’s wise counsel.”
Eloisa blinked. “What wise counsel is that?”
“How are your spying skills, Eloisa?”
* * * *
“It’s fortunate the fate of England never rested in our hands.” Eloisa dragged herself across her bedchamber and flopped down on her back on her bed. “We’re dreadful spies. We’ve been prowling about the house like thieves all day and haven’t turned up anything incriminating, unless you count the amount of port my father consumes in an evening.”
They’d spent the day eavesdropping, interrogating the servants, and prodding Aunt Jarvis for any stray bits of information. They’d lingered at closed doors, and crept down dim hallways. They’d ducked into alcoves and hidden around corners, hoping to glean whatever tidbits they could. They were both exhausted from the strain, and they’d discovered nothing of any import.
“Dreadful enough. We’re not going to get anywhere creeping about and eavesdropping on the servants. We need to change tactics, Eloisa.” Lucy stared out the window for a long moment, thinking, then turned to face her cousin. “Your mother said my uncle dines out this evening.”
They hadn’t gotten anything else of use from Aunt Jarvis, but she had been able to give them the details of Uncle Jarvis’s social schedule. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and Lucy intended to turn it to account.
Eloisa sat up, bracing herself on her elbows. “Yes, and thank God for it. At least we won’t be obliged to sit through dinner with him. Have you noticed he’s always watching us, Lucy? He’s never paid me the least bit of attention before, but now he can’t seem to take his eyes off either of us.”
That was true enough. Every time Lucy ventured a glance at her Uncle Jarvis, she found his hard, brown eyes fixed on her and Eloisa, his thin lips turned down in a frown. “Well, he won’t be watching us tonight.”
“What are you plotting, Lucy? That look on your face is positively sinister.”
Lucy crossed the room and sat down next to Eloisa on the bed. “Not sinister. Determined. I’m going to sneak into my uncle’s office tonight and rifle through his desk.”
“What?” Eloisa struggled upright, horror written plainly on her face. “You can’t, Lucy! If he should discover you’ve been there, he’ll…well, I don’t knowwhathe’ll do, but it’s bound to be awful. Why, he might lock you in your bedchamber and leave you there for the rest of the season!”
“No, he won’t dare. Lord Godfrey’s courting me, remember? I can’t receive his lordship’s attentions if I’m locked in my bedchamber. In any case, my uncle won’t discover I’ve been there. I can be quite stealthy when I choose.”
“I don’t doubt that, but to sneak into his office, Lucy! What if his desk is locked?”
Lucy had considered that. She knew a way around that problem, but Eloisa would start lecturing if she knew what it was, so Lucy kept the information to herself. “If it is, I’ll, ah…I’ll find a way around it once I’m there.”
Eloisa didn’t look convinced. “I don’t like this plan.”
“Do you have a better one?” Lucy wasn’t any surer about the plan than Eloisa was, but she had to dosomething. Lord Godfrey’s attentions grew more pointed every day. Without Ciaran to protect her, she’d find herself the Countess of Godfrey by the end of next week.
Lucy shuddered with revulsion. She loathed locked doors, but she’d rather be confined to her bedchamber for the remainder of the season than marry Lord Godfrey. She leaned forward and clasped Eloisa’s hands. “You’ll help me, won’t you? I can’t do it without you.”
Eloisa’s gaze met Lucy’s pleading one. She let out a resigned sigh, then rose and crossed the bedchamber to make sure the door was closed. When she turned back to Lucy, her face was grim with determination. “Very well. Tell me what you want me to do.”
* * * *
As was the case with most villains, the hours between Lucy and Eloisa’s decision to commit the crime and the actual act seemed to drag on forever. As expected, they were not obliged to endure Uncle Jarvis’s company at dinner, but Aunt Jarvis’s high spirits at having escaped her husband’s presence for an evening made her chattier than usual. By the time she took herself off to bed, Lucy’s nerves were stretched tighter than piano wire.
“We won’t have to worry about my mother catching us out tonight.” Eloisa had gone upstairs to bid her mother goodnight, but now she joined Lucy in front of the fire in the library. “She took a dose of Dr. Digby’s Calming Tonic. I left the bottle on the table beside her bed.”
Lucy nodded. “Good. Let’s wait another hour, though, just to be sure. Your father won’t be back for ages still, and in an hour the servants will have settled.”
They waited in the library for what felt like an eternity, but at last one of the downstairs maids snuffed the candles, leaving the hallway that led to the study and the library dim. Lucy waited until the house was quiet, then rose from her chair and signaled Eloisa to follow her. They crept down the hallway to Uncle Jarvis’s study. Lucy grasped the door handle, then paused, squeezing her eyes closed and praying it wasn’t locked.
Ah, a stroke of luck! The handle turned easily in her hand, and within seconds she and Eloisa were inside.
“It looks as if a hurricane blew through here,” Eloisa hissed. “How are we meant to find anything in this mess?”
Lucy gaped at the untidy piles of paper stacked on top of her uncle’s desk, and her heart began an anxious pounding. She was terrified to touch a single sheet lest the entire mountain toppled over.
