Dark Obsession (24 page)

A metallic gleam caught his eye. His hands closed around cool metal. Grayson lifted a silver platter and held it up to the light silhouetting the entrance.

He frowned as he examined it, running his fingertips along elaborate engravings. He set it aside and delved into the crate again, counting two dozen platters in all. Packed around them he discovered silver goblets etched to match the plates.

Choosing another crate at random, a larger one this time, he again kicked through the wood. The straw inside yielded a pair of six-branched candelabra. Three more pair lay beneath successive layers of packing.

Grayson sat back on his haunches. He had seen enough. Silver, casks containing brandy or wine . . . whatever else lay concealed undoubtedly shared one basic characteristic: stolen goods. Had to be. Why else the secrecy? But his conclusion did little to solve the greater part of the mystery. How had this booty gotten here, and who would someday come to claim it?

One answer crashed through every possible theory. Smugglers still made regular runs along the Cornish coast, secreting black-market goods in and out of the country to avoid the rising excise taxes. But why here, on the private property of the Earl of Clarington?

He pressed a palm to his temple.
No.
He refused to consider it. It couldn’t be possible.

Not
his
brother.

But . . . if Tom
had
resorted to criminal activities, it would have been because he, Grayson, pushed him to it, because he forced Tom’s hand by not raising his own to help when he should have.

Pushed him . . . pushed him over the brink . . .

The rushing in his ears made him light-headed, sickened, until he realized the sound wasn’t caused merely by his guilt-ridden thoughts. He went still, ears pricked. The tide was fast approaching, the waves now echoing inside the main cave. He set a goblet aside from the rest, intending to take it with him when he left. The engravings might help him identify where the spoils had come from. If he were lucky, he’d discover a silversmith’s mark on the bottom. And if luckier still, he’d learn enough to absolve his brother.

And himself, at least of this particular crime.

Quickly he tucked the other items back into their crates, replaced the straw, and balanced two intact crates on top of the ones he had broken, rearranging as best he could to conceal his intrusion into the lair. Satisfied, he clambered back through the opening, a goblet weighting his coat pocket.

The sea heaved at the mouth of the cave, venturing in, rushing out, stretching farther inside at each return. He’d be ankle deep if he left now. But he couldn’t leave. Not until he replaced the barricade and erased his presence here. Hastily he began shoving each rock back into place.

The rain had stopped, and not long ago Nora had left Jonny under the supervision of the head groom while the boy exercised his Welsh cob in the closest paddock. She stayed long enough to express her admiration for the spirited, misty-coated Puck. After urging Jonny to be careful going over the jumps, she hurried back to the house to take advantage of yet another opportunity.

Now she stood in the center of her room, contemplating its four walls. They appeared solid enough. But last night Grayson had somehow gained entry through two locked doors. She was not mistaken. He
had
been here. Every thrumming nerve in her body, every tingle along her skin, assured her so.

He hadn’t entered through the dressing rooms, for the chair had still been wedged beneath the knob this morning. A duplicate key to the main door? But the key she had turned last night had still protruded from the lock in exactly the position she had left it. If Grayson had unlocked the door from the other side, her key would have been pushed free and fallen to the floor.

Then how on earth? Through a window? No balcony or ledge ran between their chambers.

I’ll wager there’s a maze of back stairwells and secret passages.
Those were her own words the day she arrived at Blackheath Grange. Her eyes narrowed as she studied the wall separating the bedrooms.

Rushing forward, she ran her palms over the plasterwork and framed panels of wallpaper. Carefully she inspected every reachable inch of wall to the right and left of the wardrobe closet, which was far too heavy to be moved. Perhaps one of these papered rectangles . . .

Solid. All of it. Hands on hips, she stepped back, a rueful grin curling her lips.

Secret passage indeed. She was merely letting the mysteries of the house affect her judgment, just as she had last night in believing she’d seen a ghost. Of course she had merely fallen asleep in the chair by the window. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d dreamed vividly, which explained her tugging the curtain until it fell.

That curtain had been restored earlier by the upstairs maid. She walked over to it, inspecting the rod and brackets, when an airy rustle of silk sent her gaze darting back to the wall she had just scrutinized.

Her pulsed throbbed in her wrists as she stood utterly still, listening. Waiting. Holding her breath.

At least a full minute passed and nothing more occurred. As she was about to dismiss her fears as beyond silly, a thought struck her.

Her bedroom was a perfect square. The two dressing rooms lay between her room and Grayson’s, but they were small and set against the outer wall of the house. Then . . . what else lay between the two bedrooms?

There had to be something she had missed. She stood in front of the wardrobe, considering. It towered some eight feet high and surely weighed a ton.

Her gaze dropped, and a discovery sent her sinking to her knees. The piece sat on three, not four wheels. The left rear leg was different. On hands and knees, then, she crawled to inspect what turned out to be a sort of pivot.

Gathering her skirts, she pushed to her feet. A tight frown tugged her brows as she opened the doors, peered inside, closed one and gripped the edge of the other with both hands. With a quick little prayer that she wasn’t about to make a colossal mistake and bring the massive cupboard crashing down on top of her, she gave a fierce tug.

And was rewarded when, after an initial hesitation, the wardrobe swung away from the wall as easily as an opening door. Which perhaps it was.

Heart thumping with the excitement of her discovery, not to mention the outrage of Grayson’s subterfuge, she studied yet another tall, wallpapered rectangle. While it appeared innocent enough at first, further inspection revealed it to be slightly different from the rest. By nearly pressing her nose against the paneling, she could detect a hairline gap between the molding and the wall itself.

She pressed the flats of her hands against the panel and pushed. It didn’t budge. In the same position, she tried sliding the panel to the right, then to the left.

On the second try she felt a tiny shift, as if the panel were held by some sort of latch. She peered closely . . . and saw it—a miniscule recess near waist height at the edge of the panel, just large enough for a fingertip. She placed her forefinger into it, pushed . . . and heard a faint click.

Her jaw dropped even as she slid the panel open. Goodness. With all her searching, she hadn’t truly expected to find anything. With one hand braced against the wall and ready to pull back should the need arise, she leaned and peered inside. Detecting no immediate dangers, she stepped over the foot-high threshold into a stairwell swathed in shadow.

The hairs on her arms bristled. She tossed a wistful look over her shoulder to the safety of her room. Then she lifted her skirts and placed a foot on the bottom step. It gave a creak, loud in the stillness, a jarring counterbeat to her racing pulse.

The darkness thickened as she climbed, pressing in around her. Once she stopped to peer down at the light spilling in from her bedchamber, just to assure herself the sliding panel hadn’t somehow closed, sealing her in. Slowly she ascended to the top . . . to find nothing but a dead end.

There was nothing, merely a small landing. A staircase to nowhere? Indeed, if the past half hour had taught her anything, it was not to put stock in the obvious.

She debated going back down and returning with a lamp, then discarded the notion as one that would take too much time. Bother the darkness, for it couldn’t hurt her. Only this house’s secrets had the power to do that. She wanted answers, and she wanted them now.

As she had done below, she ran her hands over the walls on either side of her, flinching and stifling a cry when her fingers tangled in a sticky web. She quickly wiped them on her skirts and continued her search. On the wall to her left, her fingertips detected a tiny catch similar to the one downstairs. She pressed, and this wall too slid open. Dusty light from inside bathed the stairwell.

Again she paused. What would she find inside, and did she truly wish to know? She entertained no doubts that Grayson had used this passage to steal into her room last night. Perhaps other nights as well. Could he be hiding something here, something she might regret discovering?

Vague fears slid like ice through her, raising goose bumps. Pausing to draw a fortifying breath into her lungs, she stepped into a narrow room, cramped beneath the sloping roof of the house and illuminated by a single recessed window. A faded rug partially covered the wide pine floorboards. A small escritoire with a glass bookcase occupied one corner. Against the back wall, an exposed mattress slumped like an idle slattern. That was all.

A secret hideaway, but for what purpose? An unpleasant sensation gripped her. She nudged the mattress with her toe, raising a puff of dust. Seeing neither blanket nor pillows anywhere, she decided the bed could not have been used in a long time, and dismissed unsavory thoughts of her husband, midnight trysts and anonymous women.

By the direction she’d come, she deduced herself to be standing directly above her dressing room. If she crossed to the other side and found yet another sliding panel, surely she would descend to Grayson’s chamber.

She had never entered his bedroom before. A kernel of trepidation skittered through her, yet in a deeper, darker place inside her, desire stirred.

But Grayson would not now be in his room. He had left the house early again on another of his mysterious errands, and hadn’t yet returned.

Like a seasoned thief she stole across the room, treading lightly and going utterly still when a loose floorboard shifted beneath her weight. Hearing nothing beyond the blood rushing in her ears, she continued on. Easily she opened the room’s second sliding door, all the while marveling at the astounding ingenuity that had gone into concealing the little garret.

Once more in semidarkness she felt her way down the predicted second set of stairs. By the time she reached the bottom, accessing the final hidden latch felt nearly as natural as opening any other door in the house.

No wardrobe or other piece of furniture blocked her entry into the adjoining chamber. A note of mixed triumph, indignation and pure fascination set her ears ringing. Until this moment, a tiny part of her had clung to the threadbare hope that the passage did not lead to Grayson’s room, and that she had merely imagined him in her room last night, dreamed of his heated presence, his fiery touch.

She stepped into the masculine environs of dark wood walls and forest green draperies, of furnishings dominated by heavy English oak. A headboard carved with a lion’s head at its center towered above a massive bed, hung with folds of green and gold velvet gracefully gathered and secured with tasseled cords to the bed’s four tapering posts.

Though unoccupied, the room breathed Grayson’s familiar scent, a heady mingling of the earthy outdoors and genteel grooming, entirely masculine, vaguely unsettling and, as Nora breathed it in deep, undeniably arousing. Had she not known this to be his room, she would have guessed correctly. His imprint was everywhere—in the dark intensity of the colors, in the hulking furniture, in the brooding silence broken only by the rain against the windows.

Detecting movement at the corner of her eye, she jumped, then calmed when she realized the source. Outside, rain traced wavering patterns down the windowpanes, throwing writhing shadows across the floor.

To her right stood a bureau, wide and high, its top littered with Grayson’s personal effects. She couldn’t help running her fingers over a comb and brush, his silver pocket watch—funny he didn’t have it with him—and a pair of onyx cuff links. A cravat lay coiled beside his watch. She picked it up, the fine linen leaving traces of dampness across her fingertips. Bringing it close to her nose, she breathed in a faint salt tang.

‘‘How odd.’’

‘‘Indeed.’’

At the sound of the rumbling baritone, Nora yelped. Spinning about, she whisked her hands behind her like a child caught stealing. Her gaze searched the dusky corners; at first she didn’t see him. But she felt him, oh, she felt his presence filling the room and surrounding her like a physical embrace.

He stood in the dressing room doorway, taking shape from the surrounding gloom like an apparition materializing from thin air. A full day’s growth shaded his jaw in baleful reflection of the shadows beneath his eyes. His clothes, a white shirt lying open at the neck and tight breeches tucked into riding boots, seemed to adhere to his body like a second skin. She saw a scratch at the corner of his eye, another across the bridge of his nose.

Had he been brawling?

As he returned her stare, his nostrils flared and his stark blue eyes simmered with . . . anger, displeasure . . . desire? Whatever it was both chilled her and lit a smoldering fire inside her . . . and made her want to defy her fears and go to him. Go to him and kiss the scrapes on his face, soothe the wounds in his heart.

He pushed forward into the room. ‘‘Good afternoon, Lady Lowell. Perhaps you’d care to explain what the blazes you’re doing here.’’