His expression remained doubtful.
She swallowed the dryness in her throat. ‘You can stay and watch if you wish.’
‘Good God, woman, it is long past midnight. A time when honest people are heading for their beds.’
‘I have other duties to perform during the day, as you know.’
He muttered something under his breath. ‘All right. Search. But you will not remove anything from the property without the owner’s express permission.’ He folded his arms across his chest and leant against the wall.
It was the best she could hope for. Besides, if she did find the will, she would be able to put paid to his suspicions in an instant.
She stared at the picture on the other side of the fireplace, another hunting scene. She dragged her chair around the hearth and stepped up. Taking care not to put any pressure on the cord, she pushed the picture aside. Nothing here either. Skirts in hand in preparation of jumping down, she glanced over at Stanford. He was staring at her ankles. When she didn’t move, he raised his gaze to her face. She glared. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Not in the slightest.’
Heat flooded her body at his lazy mocking smile. They locked gazes for a moment and then finally he shrugged and looked away. She leapt from the chair.
There was another picture, this time a Scottish scene, complete with a gillie and his dogs out amid the heather. A console table stood beneath it. It looked sturdy enough to hold her weight, but she needed the chair to climb up. She turned to pick it up.
‘Allow me.’
The velvety voice in her ear caused her heart to leap into her throat. She drew back. ‘Certainly. Over there by the window, if you please.’
‘That is not the kind of wall where one would locate a safe.’
‘I want to look.’
‘Well, we don’t need the chair.’ He strode to the picture, reached up, grasped the frame and shifted the picture at an angle. Nothing. His expression was long suffering. ‘As I said. Can we now put an end to this nonsense?’
Damnation. He was going to try to rush her out of here. ‘If you don’t want to help, sit down and leave me to it.’ She walked over to the bookshelves and tried twisting and turning any ornate projection she could see.
He let go a heavy sigh and did the same for the ones above her head. Lord, but the man was tall. When they were finished there, she peeled back the large rug covering the middle of the floor and started on the floorboards.
‘What is so important about this picture anyway?’ he grumbled while he tested the boards at the other end of the room.
‘It is the only picture we had of my mother.’
‘Why would someone hide it away?’
The man just couldn’t leave well alone. ‘My father couldn’t bear to look at it after she died. He put it away in a safe place for us. When we left, it was forgotten.’
‘It sounds like a very bad play,’ he said. ‘Who can’t bear to look at a picture?’
‘My father loved my mother very much.’
‘As I said, a very bad play,’ he scoffed.
She frowned at him. His gaze was fixed on the floor, but the smile on his lips was not merely mocking, it was bitterly cynical.
‘I suppose you are one of those men who does not believe in love,’ she said, flipping down one corner of the rug and moving to another carpet corner on her side of the room.
‘Love is a fairy tale created by females with nothing better to do than create fantastical events in their heads.’
‘Don’t you love anyone? Your family? Is there no woman you have ever loved?’
‘Family is a duty. I fulfil my responsibilities. I believe in friend ship. It also has responsibilities.’ He looked up, his dark gaze shadowed and unfathomable. ‘But all this emotional talk and poetry about hearing music, the sky being brighter, because you love someone is just so much claptrap. It isn’t possible.’
The vehemence in his tone took her aback. ‘I will admit there are different kinds of love. Love of family is quite different from romantic love. But why would so many people, men and women, write about it, if they have never experienced it?’
‘Because they are in lust. People don’t like to think of their baser urges as the same as unthinking beasts, so they call it another name.’
She gasped. Baser urges. Is that how he saw love? ‘Then what about familial love?’
‘Family members care about each other as long as it benefits them. If it doesn’t, then they don’t.’
Never had she heard anything so cold. What on earth could have caused such a chilly outlook? She flung the carpet back in place and put her hands on her hips. ‘I feel sorry for you, Lord Stanford, if that is how you feel.’
He kicked his corner of the carpet flat. A puff of dust rose up. ‘Indeed, Mrs Travenor. Well, I am not the one searching a stranger’s home for a stray picture that a widower no longer wanted to look at and promptly forgot about because he probably married again to assuage his baser instincts.’
How had he guessed Father had married again? ‘My father never forgot my mother. Never.’
He gave her a dark glance. ‘Are we done here? Are there any other hiding places you can think of?’
‘The study.’
He groaned and pulled out his fob watch, bringing it close to the lantern on the table. ‘It is almost two. After the study, we will leave.’
‘After the study, there is nowhere else to look.’ She’d searched all the other rooms. Oh, how she hoped the study held the answer.
She blew out the candles she’d lit, picked up her lantern and marched along the corridor, all too aware of Stanford trailing behind.
She was aware of his presence all the time. It was like having the devil sitting on your shoulder, whispering tempting words in your ear, because she kept remembering their almost-kiss, kept feeling a glimmer of the heat that had ripped through her body, each time their gazes met. And she had the distinct impression, when he looked at her, that he was remembering it, too.
‘You certainly seem to know your way around,’ he said as she went to the study and flung back the door.
‘Because I lived here,’ she said, not quite disguising the triumph in her voice.
‘Or because this is not the first time you have searched.’
The room was bare of furniture. Not even one picture remained.
‘Oh,’ she said, recalling her father’s oak desk and the heavy wooden chairs. ‘Where is everything?’
Stanford shrugged.
If only Inchbold was here, he would know. She glanced around the oak-panelled walls. Could they hide a secret place? She tried tapping on the wall nearest the door.
Stanford groaned. ‘This is ridiculous.’
‘Not to me, it isn’t,’ she said fiercely. Her sisters were depending on her to find the will. They all were. The debts were mounting by the day. Debts to the school. Debts to the doctor. She’d managed to stave them off, but she had borrowed against the certain knowledge they would inherit something by way of her father. When no will was found, everything had gone to his new wife and their son and the debts had remained. Growing more crushing by the day as interest piled on top of interest. She clenched her hands. She would not believe her