fun we shall have, Nell.”
“Indeed, my lady,” the girl said neutrally. Leath cast her another glance and was surprised to see that she studied him without her usual reserve. Instead, she regarded him as if he was a puzzle she couldn’t put together. He wondered why. The mystery here was Nell Trim, not the Marquess of Leath.
“Can you stay, James?”
“Of course,” he said, although now he paid closer attention to his estates, he was surprised how much work it took to run them. Even more surprising was how he enjoyed meeting the challenge of his vast inheritance.
“Lovely. Perhaps Nell will read on. She’s most entertaining.”
He stifled a groan. The last thing he needed was that low, husky, damnably suggestive voice describing seduction.
“I’m sure his lordship doesn’t want to listen to me,” Miss Trim said.
She’d avoided him recently. Was she still smarting after their talk in the library? Or had his mother told her that he’d tried to send her away?
“You should read James some of those agricultural reports that arrived yesterday,” his mother said drily.
“How did you know about those?” he asked, although he shouldn’t be surprised. His mother remained mistress of the house, despite rarely leaving her rooms.
“I have my spies,” she said. “They tell me that the ghosts are back.”
“What nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense. As a new bride, I saw Lady Mary on the battlements.”
“On a foggy night, Mamma.”
“I’m not the only one.”
“At least you were sober.”
His mother’s jaw firmed. They’d had this argument before. She fancied that the castle, parts of which dated to the fourteenth century, was haunted. “Lady Mary’s visiting us again.”
“On the battlements?”
“No, in the library. For the last three nights, lights have been seen after midnight.”
He thought he heard a strangled gasp from Miss Trim, but when he glanced at her, she’d lowered her eyes in her perfect servant pose.
“Who the devil’s skulking in the gardens at that hour?” he asked.
“Garson was watching for poachers.”
“And drinking to pass the time,” Leath said with grim amusement. “I’ll have a word with him. If my gamekeeper has taken to the bottle, he’s not safe wandering the property with a gun.”
“You mock, James, but you know it’s true that Lady Mary’s husband strangled her.”
“I know that’s true. I don’t know it’s true that she lingers to keep an eye on her descendants. And if she does, I doubt that she’s developed a taste for literature. Especially as I have it on good authority that my library is full of boring books.”
He didn’t look at Miss Trim. But his brain worked, even as he argued with his mother’s conclusions. Despite his joke, Garson wasn’t a drunkard. If he said he saw lights in the library, odds were that he had.
A determination to catch Miss Trim in the act gripped him. If he could prove to his mother that the girl meant no good, he could send her away.
And conquer this inconvenient itch to bed her.
Nell had read every thought that crossed the marquess’s mind when his mother told him about Lady Mary’s ghost. He’d known immediately who was flitting around his library. Fear had twisted her stomach into knots as she waited for him to denounce her. Then she’d realized that he’d take this as a golden opportunity to catch her prowling about.
Her suspicions were confirmed that evening when she saw Mr. Wells, the daunting butler, delivering a tray to the library. Obviously refreshments for his lordship’s watch.
For once, she was a step ahead of Lord Leath.
The diary wasn’t in the library. The next likely place—in fact always the most likely place—was his lordship’s bedroom. After all, the scandalous document would hardly be shelved alongside Fordyce’s Sermons where anyone could lay their hand upon it. The problem was entering the marquess’s rooms unobserved. His vigil in the library provided the ideal chance.
Now as she crept along darkened hallways, only a candle to light her way, the house seemed twice the size as it did by day. And by day, the sprawling pile stretched for miles. Thick carpeting under her feet muffled her passing, but she remained preternaturally alert.
His lordship’s valet lived above his rooms, but last week Selsby had been called away to his sick mother. Everything conspired to allow her to search Leath’s apartments.
She prayed that she’d find the diary quickly. She desperately needed to escape Alloway Chase. The longer she stayed, the flimsier became her resolution. Every moment she spent with the marquess left her more befuddled. Witness today when he’d surprised his mother with those books. Hardly the act of a thoughtless cad. And was he hypocrite enough to denounce Lord Byron for sins he himself had committed? She wouldn’t have thought so.
If she’d been ignorant of the marquess’s offenses, she’d like him. Oh, who was she fooling? She’d more than like him. Even knowing his wickedness, she found him breathtakingly attractive.
However dirty that made her feel.
How could she yearn after the man who had destroyed Dorothy? Was she victim to the same fatal weakness as her half sister?
Carefully she inched open the door to the marquess’s apartments. Although he was safely ensconced in his library, her heart skittered with fear that somehow he was in two places at once.
She stepped into a dark, cavernous space. She closed the door and raised her candle to reveal a sitting room, as masculine in decor as the marchioness’s was feminine. Flickering light glanced across a leather couch and two armchairs beside a cold hearth. Piles of books teetered on heavy mahogany tables. She’d lay money there wasn’t a novel among them. Light glinted off decanters on the sideboard.
James Fairbrother’s presence was palpable, as though he stood right behind her. The muscles across her neck and shoulders knotted until she told herself to settle down. He was downstairs. She was safe, at least for now.
She pushed open the door from the sitting room and entered a short corridor. Shelves lined the first room off the hallway. She inhaled to calm leapfrogging nerves, then wished she hadn’t. When had the marquess’s scent become so familiar? Her senses expanded with pleasure as she recognized sandalwood soap and clean, healthy male. Riffling through the clothes he wore on that strong, hard body seemed unforgivably intimate, and she fumbled the door shut with a loud click that made her heart jolt with alarm.
Desperately
