are you doing, Cassandra?” she repeated when her cousin continued to ignore her. “Why are you looking through all these old trunks?”
“I thought there might be something of interest here,” Cassandra replied vaguely.
Joanna quirked an eyebrow, but her cousin’s interests were always so peculiar to her that Cassandra’s answer did not seem out of the ordinary. “But you are making Sir Philip all dusty.”
“I don’t mind, Miss Moulton,” Sir Philip replied cheerfully. “I am having a perfectly fine time.”
A little to his amazement, he realized that he actually was enjoying himself. It was dusty and hot in the attic, but he was doing something that he had never done before, and it was rather fun exploring the old things in the trunk and sharing his amusement at the antiquated book with Cassandra. He could think of no other woman who would care as little about the fact that he had come upon her when she was dirty and disheveled, clothed in an obviously old, ill-fitting dress. Within minutes she was talking unselfconsciously with him and chuckling over the excerpts he read from the book.
He glanced over at Joanna, whose perfect looks were beginning to melt a little in the airless attic. She was dressed like a lady and acting as one should act; moreover, her coloring and features were such as any woman would envy. But, after ten minutes in Cassandra’s company, Joanna struck him only as dull as ditch water, whereas he felt his eyes drawn over and over again to Cassandra’s animated face.
Joanna frowned at him, annoyed at his cheerfulness. The man was acting like a boor, she thought; any gentleman should have taken the hint and escorted her back to her home long ago. It was obvious to her that stronger action needed to be taken.
She rose to her feet. “I fear that the heat is too much for me. I must go back downstairs.”
“Of course, Joanna,” Cassandra replied in a pleasant voice. “Whatever you think best.”
“Good day, Miss Moulton,” Sir Philip said absently, distracted by a small stack of letters, yellowed with age and tied with a pink ribbon, that were fitted into the corner of the trunk.
He snatched them up and turned them over, aware of a surprising stab of excitement in his stomach. He did not even glance up to see the dagger look that Joanna directed toward him before she clattered down the stairs in a demonstration of ladylike rage.
“Cassandra—” he said in a low voice, not noticing that he called her by her first name, an unwarranted familiarity given the short time they had known each other.
Cassandra turned, as oblivious as he to his use of her given name. Her heart speeded up as she saw the pile of letters, even as she reminded herself that she had found dozens of other packets of letters already, and none of them had been the ones she was looking for.
She reached out for them, saying pragmatically, “I am sure these are too recent,” even as her fingers closed around them with trembling eagerness.
Cassandra brought them closer, but as soon as she saw the spidery writing, she sighed. “Oh, no! This is Edna Verrere’s writing. I would have thought I had discovered everything she ever wrote by now. She was a most faithful daughter, and she wrote her mother regularly after she married. Her mother was equally faithful about keeping her letters.”
She pulled the top letter from the pile and quickly skimmed it, just to make sure that it was indeed Edna Verrere who had written. “Yes, she’s talking about her son Reginald again—a most priggish-sounding fellow.”
“Oh, him!”
Both Cassandra and Philip looked up at the sound of one of the twins’ voices. Both the boys had made their way over to them when they saw the packet of letters, but now Hart threw himself down in disgust atop one of the trunks.
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