Evie’s eyes travelled to the double door on the right side of the wall. She wondered where that door led to, and whether it would take her to the study.
She looked quickly back at the drawing room door to confirm it was closed. Then she stepped up to the door to the study and gently pushed down the handle.
It opened easily.
The room was dark. Taking a candle that was placed on the mantelpiece, she stepped inside.
It was the study, indeed.
The walls here were lined with more bookshelves. Theman clearly liked to read. And ah, there was the desk. She stepped further into the room to the desk, walked around it, and stumbled over something.
It toppled over and rolled across the carpet.
Was it a scrap paper basket? She set it up again, and felt something soft, like…wool? It was a ball of wool indeed. Puzzled, she followed the thread of the woollen ball that had rolled out. There were knitting needles too. And what was this? She lifted a soft fabric out. Was this a half-finished…sock?
A field marshal’s study, instead of harbouring pistols, harboured knitting work.
A snort escaped her. So he had not been telling a fib when he said he liked to knit in his spare time?
How excessively…droll!
Maybe that was what he needed to do when the pressure of his position got too high. And maybe it was exactly the right thing to do, as well. She gave the basket a pat. “Continue knitting, Field Marshal. Your soldiers are in need of socks.”
She lifted her candle to survey the bookshelf and saw nothing remarkable there. The usual classics, English and German, and Latin books, leaning to the more belligerent side. Caesar’sCommentarii de Bello Gallico, Thucydides, Plutarch’sLives, Tacitus. The usual literature.
She trailed a finger over the book spines.
A sigh escaped her. Really, what was she doing here? A man like Hartenberg was far too intelligent to keep sensitive information in his private study. He would never do that. It was more likely he’d had it entrusted to his aide-de-camp, or in a safe somewhere in the depths of the War Council, impossible to access.
Yet what was she to do? That widowed baroness wassending her on a wild goose chase when it wasn’t even certain that Hartenberg had the information she needed.
She would never betray Hartenberg. She knew that for a fact. She loved the man far too much, and he would have her loyalty until her dying day.
But not to do anything, not to even try, that was not Evie, either.
Her gaze travelled along the shelves, which were interrupted by a space of wall, where yet another portrait hung, this time an oil painting of a hunting scene. Then there were bookshelves again.
Her eyes snapped back to the painting.
Strange that it hung there. Why, of all places? It was rather impractical to have it hanging there, and such an insignificant painting…
She stepped up to it, holding the candle high.
Her fingers trailed the edge of the gilt frame. There was more space there than there would be for a normal oil painting. She lodged a finger underneath, and with a soft click, it swung open.
Behind it was a shelf. And in it stood a strongbox, made of wood covered in leather, with studded iron.
Evie’s heart began to hammer faster. There it was. Julius had an almost identical chest, and in it he kept the family jewels, and the most important documents and deeds pertaining to his estate. She knew that for a fact because she’d used it to practise picking locks. There was no reason to believe that it would be any different from Hartenberg’s.
She ran her tongue over her lip.
“It’s not right to do this. But…a tiny peek inside won’t hurt, will it? Just a peek.”
She set the candle on the desk behind her andattempted to lift it out of the shelf. As expected, it was too heavy.
After a moment’s hesitation, she reached into her hair, and pulled out a hairpin. She straightened it and bent one end so it formed an L-shape. Then she inserted it into the lock and turned it once, twice, and after a few minutes of fiddling around, to her eternal shock, it clicked, and the lock opened.
“This cannot be. This is too easy,” she muttered. Her hands were sweating, and her heart was beating so fast it was almost jumping out of her chest. Here she was, in her future husband’s study, breaking into his strongbox.
