"Why?! Why can't we just sneak next door, take a look around Blackmoor House, and sneak back? No one will ever know!"
Alex spoke quietly. "Ella, I know how much you want to be a part of this adventure. I do, too. But now we're at a point where we have to involve someone who knows a bit more about these matters than we do. We're not talking about the Dowager Duchess of Lockwood's walking stick going missing. We're discussing murder and treason. I'm sorry, Ella. I've got to tell my father."
With that, Alex stood and went to the door, pulling it open and calling out to Harquist, "Is my father free to speak with me, Harquist?"
"No, my lady, I'm afraid His Grace left early this morning," the butler said with a low bow. "He is at Parliament for the morning and will leave directly from there to join your brothers in Essex."
Alex tempered her disappointment. "Thank you. I suppose I shall wait and speak with him there, then."
She closed the door and turned back to her friends, who were watching her carefully, waiting for her next move — one they would support without question. She met Ella's eye, noting her friend's desperate attempt to hide the thoughts that were written, quite plainly, across her face.
"All right, Ella. You win. Blackmoor House it is."
twenty
Sneaking across the gardens to Blackmoor House felt very different by the light of day from how it had been when Alex was skulking around in the darkness the night before. In fact, it rather felt more like an afternoon walk than a clandestine activity. This could have been attributed to the fact that there were gardeners hard at work mere feet away who took absolutely no interest in their activities, or it could have been the fact that she hadn't just overheard a horrible conversation, but Alex had a suspicion that it was more Ella's glee at their activities. And her inability to keep quiet about it.
"How do we get into Blackmoor's study? Did you climb in?"
"No, he lifted me in."
"Hmm. Right, then. Vivi will have to give us a boost up."
"She will, will she?" from the booster in question. "Well, how else do we sneak in?"
"I rather thought that we could knock on the front door and have Bingham let us in," Alex said matter-of-factly, referencing Blackmoor's ancient butler, as she led the trio around the corner of the house and toward the main entrance.
"What? We can't do that!" Ella stopped, indignant.
"Whyever not?" Vivi asked, following Alex. "It seems a perfectly acceptable way to enter. In fact, I believe I've been entering houses that way for my entire life."
Seeing that she had been outvoted, not to mention left behind, Ella scurried to catch up to the other two as they made their way to the door. "And what do you expect we’ll say to him that Will end in his leaving us in the house without a chaperone?" she whispered rather indelicately as Alex knocked on the door and put a finger to her lips, calling for silence.
"I imagine I’ll think of something." The door opened, and she turned a brilliant smile on the older gentleman behind it. "Bingham! Good day!" She pushed through, Vivi and Ella hot on her heels. Once inside the house, she untied her bonnet, not all owing for a response. "Blackmoor asked that we pop over here and pick up some books from the study that he meant to bring over for my father before he left to go hunting with my brothers," she said quickly.
"I find him to be very forgetful, don't you?"
As the butler began to speak, Vivi jumped in, picking up on the game, "Oh, I do as well — why, the other night, he left his walking stick at the Worthington House dinner. Nick had to return it the next morning, remember?"
"Indeed. So silly." She threw up her hands in a ridiculous gesture. "You don't mind if we just pop in and pick them up, do you, Bingham?" Alex was already moving toward the study, leaving the poor old man looking rather dumbfounded. "There's no need for you to wait for us. He gave us a rather long list. Didn't he, Ella?"
Ella turned surprised eyes on her. "He did?"
Vivi sighed, feigning exasperation. "Ella, you're almost as forgetful as Blackmoor. You put the list inside your journal, didn't you?"
Alex turned wide eyes on her friend. "You did bring the list, didn't you? Or do we have to go back?"
Ella caught on. Finally. "No. No! Of course not. I have it right here." She went digging into her reticule and brought out the book, opening it quickly and tearing out a page. She waved it under the nose of the butler, who was looking from one girl to the next, as if watching a game of lawn tennis. Ella buried her nose in the "list," saying, "Agrarian Trends in the Counties of Essex and Staffordshire, 1750—1790. Good Lord! Your poor father. Hopefully there's a novel somewhere on this list."
Vivi's mouth twitched in a desperate attempt to hold back the smile threatening to break across her face. She affected a feminine whine and said,
"Let's go, Ella. The ribbon shop on Bond Street is receiving a new shipment of silks today. I shouldn't like to spend all day with Blackmoor's musty old books." Turning a wide, brilliant smile on the butler, she said, "Which way, Bingham?"
The butler pointed mutely in the direction of the study, and the three girls were off and through the door before he could say a word. Once inside, Alex called out, loudly enough for him to hear from his spot, "It's rather drafty in here. Ella, be a dear and close the door? I should hate to catch a chill."
The door closed firmly, leaving the poor old man on the other side, staring speechlessly at it, wondering at the silliness of females and thanking his maker that his masters had never had daughters, before taking himself off to continue his afternoon duties.
"The poor creature never had a chance of survival," Alex said, walking toward Blackmoor's desk. "You were both excellent."
"Although Ella almost ruined our chances," Vivi pointed out with a smile.
"Indeed," Alex agreed, "some investigator you make. You did rally, however. I confess I was quite impressed with Agrarian Trends. Nice touch."
"Thank you. I thought so, myself." Ella nodded in appreciation.
"We had better start finding a pile of books to carry out of here. We wouldn't like Bingham to think we were being untruthful." Vivi moved toward a bookshelf and started to do just that as Ella and Alex chuckled.
The girls tackled separate parts of the room working quickly but carefully, making sure to leave things exactly as they were found. Vivi checked the shelves as she searched for books that might seem relevant to the Duke of Worthington to anyone who cast a discerning eye, building a pile of them by the door that would topple if someone were to open it, to warn them that they were about to be discovered.
After several minutes of searching and turning up nothing, Alex sat in the earl's chair, announcing, "Everything here has been looked at, picked over, and considered. If there were something to be found in this room, it would have been found."
Ella blew a stray lock of hair from her face and closed a cabinet she had been searching through. "Agreed. But, then, where would it be?"
"I don't know, but we're not going to look for it now," declared Alex. "I promised you access to Blackmoor's study. Nothing else. We should go — as it is, when he discovers that we were here, we're going to be in a mountain of trouble."
"This is interesting," Vivi said from across the room, where she was holding a leather-bound book in her hands. "Someone has peeled the endpaper from this volume."
Ella asked, "Which volume is it?"
"A History of Essex. I selected it because I thought it would seem relevant to the nonexistent Agrarian Trends of Essex that we are expected to procure while here. But the binding is loose and —" Vivi broke off as the back page of the book peeled up off the leather cover. She gasped as a crisp, white square of paper popped out of the book. When they saw, Alex and Ella rushed from their positions across the room to join her.