She wriggled and tugged.
“Hold still.” When she grudgingly did, he spoke through clenched teeth, “It’s supposed to be like that.”
Just like the back of the gown; when hanging, the laces could be done up to the top of the back, but when a woman was inserted into it, the laces only closed to lower midback.
Leaving the back suggestively gaping, the ends of the long laces dangling…he tied them in a tight double knot.
One even he would have trouble undoing.
She humphed, then realized he’d finished. Eyes suddenly wide, she glanced over her shoulder-first at him as he stepped back, then she tried to see down her back. “What…?”
Whisking around, she put her back to the cheval glass and peered over her shoulder. “Oh, good Lord!”
Precisely his thought. Faced with the fullness of his folly, with the fabulous sight of her so enticingly, not to say provocatively displayed, all he could do was grit his teeth and bear it. And try not to stare, or too openly salivate.
In devising this plan to allow her to participate in the adventure of recovering her sister’s letter, he hadn’t-definitely hadn’t-foreseen this.
Not only was the gown a rake’s erotic dream, but with her hair up in the artful knot on top of her head, with just a few flirting tendrils hanging down on either side to brush her shoulders, she looked like a lady just begging to be tumbled.
“Yes, well.” He heard his voice, the accents hard and clipped. “There you are.” Obviously.
Steeling himself, he reached out and grasped her elbow. “Come on-the faster we find that damn letter, the sooner you can get out of that gown.”
She threw him a strange, arrested look, but allowed him to lead her to the door.
He opened it and looked out. All was silent, somnolent, no guests or scurrying servants about. Drawing Lydia through the door, he closed it, then took her hand. “This way.”
She followed beside and a little behind him as he retraced their steps to the gallery, crossed it, and headed down a corridor into another wing.
Lydia glanced around, taking in the closed doors they passed; very conscious that behind each lay guests she had no wish to meet, she tried to tiptoe in her half boots. That only made the sensation she was trying to ignore all the more intense; she’d never worn a gown, let alone one like this, with no chemise underneath.
With very step, the fine frilled petticoat weighed down by the gathers of the delicate silk and lace skirts shifted and caressed her bare flesh. Above her garters circling just above her knees, she was naked. Despite the gown-or rather in some strange manner because of it-she felt exposed in some titillating, highly illicit, intensely suggestive way.
In demanding adventure, she hadn’t imagined this, but she wasn’t about to complain. For the first time in her life, she felt truly alive; for the first time in her life, she could perceive what drew Tabitha to bold and outrageous actions.
Reaching the end of the wing, Ro turned down a secondary stair.
Lydia leaned close as they went down, whispered in his ear, “Where are we going?”
“The desk in the library,” Ro whispered back. “Barham keeps all his vowels in the drawers.”
She thought about that, thought about how unerringly Ro was leading her through Barham’s house. “You know him rather well, don’t you?”
They’d reached the ground floor; he halted before a door and met her eyes. “Knew.” Then he opened the door; her hand still locked in his, he towed her through.
She assumed being towed was the norm for courtesans.
The room was empty. Releasing her hand, Ro turned back and shut the door. When she looked at him, he nodded down the room. “There’s the desk.”
She turned; her eyes widened. “It’s enormous.”
“It was his father’s and grandfather’s-now it’s his.” Ro crossed to the massive, ornately carved desk planted like a squat oak stump before the middle of the three bay windows. Lydia trailed after him.
The windows sported deep window seats with thick red velvet cushions; they looked out on the same side of the house as the bedchamber they’d been shown to. The desk stood ten feet or so before the central window; an admiral’s chair sat between. Rounding the end of the desk, Lydia saw its unusual length was filled with drawers, with only one relatively small kneehole between.
Eyes widening, she counted four sets of five drawers. “Twenty,” she said helpfully.
Ro grimaced. “Presumably he doesn’t keep vowels in them all.” He pulled the top drawer at one end open.
He stared down at the contents, then opened the next drawer, and the next. And the next.
Then he stood back and swore.
He’d presumed wrongly. It appeared that Stephen Barham, Lord Alconbury, had saved every note of hand he’d ever received-and as Ro knew, his lordship was over thirty-five, and had been a hardened gambler for the last fifteen years.
Lydia, round-eyed, stared. “It’ll take forever to search through all these.”
Ro’s face set. He glanced at the clock sitting on the desk. “We have an hour and a half.” He pushed the admiral’s chair toward Lydia. “You take that side, I’ll take this.”
And with any luck, they’d either meet in the middle or find Tabitha’s letter-before Barham or anyone else found them.
Chapter Three
“This is absurd.” Lydia stared at the assortment of notes she’d checked and stacked on the desktop; they’d been working for ten minutes, but she’d barely made a dent in the papers crammed in the top right-hand drawer.
One drawer of the ten it fell to her to search.
“I thought gentlemen returned notes of hand when they were redeemed.”
“Most do.” Standing beside the chair in which she was sitting, Ro was sorting steadily through the papers crammed into the top drawer to the left of the kneehole. “But there are other ways. Some sign across the original note, signifying it’s been paid. Like this.” He showed her one such IOU, with Barham’s signature scrawled across Rigby Landsdowne’s.
“But why does Barham keep the wretched things?”
Ro shrugged. “Some men put deer heads on the wall-think of these as Barham’s trophies. He’s been a deep gambler for a very long time.”
“Clearly.” Lydia poked at three notes she’d lined up on the desk. “This one’s from Lord Shillingborne ten years ago, and this from a Mr. Swanson five years ago, while this last one is from Viscount Swinborne from three months ago.”
Ro humphed, then he paused, staring at the notes in his hands. Then he quickly shuffled through the other papers in the drawer he was ransacking. “Are all your notes from people with names starting with S?”
Lydia glanced at him, then flicked through the notes she’d sorted, then pulled a handful more from the drawer and checked them. “Yes. Everyone is an S.”
She leaned across to look at the notes Ro was shoving back into his drawer. “What were yours?”
“People with names starting with L.”
“Which means…” Suppressed excitement in her voice, Lydia looked along the front of the desk to the first drawer.
Ro shut the one he’d been searching and opened it. He pulled out three notes, looked. “Yes-these are the A’s.”
“Well at least that makes more sense.” Lydia stuffed the notes she’d been sorting back into the open drawer. No need to take care; there was no sense to Barham’s jumble within each drawer. “Here-give me some.”
First Ro checked the second drawer. “Bs. Good. All the A’s are in this one drawer.”
He lifted out a pile of notes from the top drawer and set it on the desk. Lydia pounced on it and started flicking through the papers-of all sizes, shapes, and construction. Some had started life as tailor’s bills; she found one that was an account from a modiste, and wondered what Lord Avinley, a renowned bachelor, had been up to.