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Would Lydia have destroyed the letters? Without another word, Giles brushed past Duckworthy, standing white-faced at the newel post, and bounded up the stairs.

His valet passed him on the way down. “I am ready, my lord. I added a few more pressed neck scarves to your trunk.”

Jake was at Giles’s heels. “Your master will be traveling with me.”

“You can follow in the coach,” Giles told the valet over his shoulder. He strode down the corridor and pushed open the door to his sister’s room without ceremony. A maid was on her knees, gathering ribbons and lace that would be sent to the bride’s new home.

It was a large room, wallpapered in a cloying pink that Lydia said flattered her skin. The bed was topped with a carved giltwood corona hung with white brocade trimmed with rosy pom-poms. All of her furniture was gilt as well, most of it imported from Italy, as was the corona.

Jake walked in the door after him and gave a low whistle. “Fit for a princess.”

Giles looked about slowly, hands on his hips. Since it was summer, the fireplace looked unused.

“If I was pilfering mail, I’d burn it,” Jake said, following his gaze. “Wouldn’t want the evidence left behind, would I?”

“Did Lady Lydia regularly ask for a fire at night?” Giles barked at the maid, who had straightened, gaping at him over a handful of ribbons.

“No, my lord. I don’t think so.”

Giles jerked his head. “Ask Duckworthy.”

“Immediately, sir,” she said, bobbing a curtsy before she trotted out of the room.

“Mattress?” Jake asked, going to the bed. Giles joined him, and they flipped the heavy horsehair mattress onto its side. Nothing underneath either.

“It would be a large bundle, if she kept all the letters I wrote,” Giles said.

“Wrote to Yasmin regularly, did you?” The American wandered over to Lydia’s dressing table and began opening the drawers.

“Every day.”

“That will cheer her up,” Jake said. “Not that Yasmin is one to wear her heart on her sleeve, but she’s been looking peaky.”

Rage throbbed in Giles’s veins. He tipped up the sofa, but there was nothing under it.

His sister had a waist-high bookcase on one side of the room, filled mostly with novels in three-book sets. Giles grabbed a bound volume with gold-leaf edges and riffled through the pages.

“No letters here.” He dropped the book on the floor and took another one. Jake joined him, and for five minutes the only sounds in the room were ruffled pages and the gentle thump of rejected books.

“Wait!” Jake said. “Look at the bottom row. Perhaps the letters are behind.” The books were perfectly lined up to the edge of the shelf, whereas on the upper shelves they were pushed in, allowing room for the ceramic sheep that Lydia collected. Jake crouched down and swept the row of books out at once. They fell to the floor with a puff of dust and flurry of pages, leaving an empty shelf.

“She had a commode. Where is it?” Giles strode over to the bed and found Lydia’s wooden stepstool shoved against the wall. He hauled it out and opened the step that concealed a commode, but the hidden chamber pot was missing. “Where’s the chamber pot?”

“Likely, she preferred to visit the privy instead,” Jake said. He had checked the remaining books and was stacking them in short towers.

“I don’t have a water closet on this floor, only downstairs.”

“And you count yourself friends with my wife? Tsk, tsk. We have her commodes on every level. If my wife had her way, there’d be a water closet attached to every bedchamber.”

“I could imagine Lydia throwing Yasmin’s letters into a chamber pot. That would amuse her.”

“Charming,” Jake said, looking behind the drapes. “If the letters were stuffed in the commode or the chamber pot, for that matter, her maid would have found them.”

Giles’s curse was met with a wry smile. “Time to leave,” Jake continued. “My wife gets tetchy if I’m not home before dark. You can explain yourself and your purloined letters in person.”

Giles cast one last look around the room. Would Lydia, his own sister, actually burn his letters? And if so, how? He looked at the bed again, then stepped onto the stool positioned beside it and looked on top of the gilt corona.

There they were.