Ripe for Pleasure

CHAPTER 14   



A loud, repetitive, and most determined thumping echoed through the house. Charles smiled to himself and continued to explore Mrs. Whedon’s bedchamber.

The footman must have regained consciousness. His men had overpowered him with a blow to the head and locked him in the kitchen’s small cellar. They’d reinforced the door with the large chopping block after shutting it. There was very little chance of Boaz getting loose anytime soon.

There was nothing here in her room. No secret panel in the wall. No hidden passageway behind the clothespress. There wasn’t even anything worth stealing. No silver brush set. No jewelry. The house had been quite carefully packed and closed before she’d left.

The sound of a large piece of furniture being shifted caught his attention, and Charles wandered down the corridor to find his men dragging a large bookcase away from the wall. Books were scattered in piles across the room, open, closed, pages bent and torn. His uncle, the duke, would have apoplexy on the spot.

“Nothing, sir,” Cooper said.

Charles turned slowly about, looking the room over. She obviously used it as a study. A small writing desk sat under the window, framed by curtains. The walls were lined with bookshelves. A watercolor of some ancient Mediterranean ruin hung above the fireplace.

“You’ve checked behind them all?”

“All the ones as ain’t built in, sir.” Cooper’s partner, a shambling ex-pugilist whose name escaped Charles, pointed at the chaos they’d created.

Charles raised one brow. “And which of them are built in?”

“Them two.” The pugilist pointed to the small shelves flanking the fireplace.

Charles crossed the room and ran his hands lightly over the seams where both cases met the wall. There was a slight gap around the left one. It could be nothing but poor craftsmanship, or it could be something more. No, there it was, an almost imperceptible draft.

He tossed all the books over his shoulder and ran his fingers slowly over each shelf, looking for anything that could be a trigger. Nothing.

Charles set his shoulder and shoved. A groan, but no movement. There was something there.


“We could rip it out of the wall, sir,” Cooper said.

Charles brushed off his hands and stepped back. “It may well come to that, but let’s not be hasty. If the trigger’s not in or on the case itself, it must be close by… No, not one of the floorboards. Not the baseboard either. Nothing behind the painting. No bell pull in the room. That would be too damn easy, wouldn’t it? No, but it really has got to be close.”

He cocked his head and studied the fireplace. No fanciful carvings. No roses or roundels to make a button out of. He ran his fingers under the mantel, behind the small lip. Yes, there it was. A knob. He fiddled with it until it moved, sliding to one side. There was a distinct snick, and the bookcase wobbled slightly.

Charles pushed it with his foot, and it slid back into the wall. Cold, musty air flooded out. He slipped in, shoulders scraping the sides of the narrow passage. A few steps and he was in a small room. A dark oubliette.

“Fetch a candle,” he yelled back over his shoulder.

A few minutes later, a wavering light licked past him, shivering over the dusty room and its scant contents. It was nothing but a priest’s hole. Large enough to have contained a strongbox, but if it ever had, the box and its contents were long gone.

Charles cursed and flung the candle down. The room pitched into darkness. He thrust Cooper out before him, nearly sending the smaller man sprawling.

Damnation. So close. He’d felt success burning just beneath his skin. If it wasn’t there now, it certainly had been. It had to have been.

He lashed out with his foot, sending a book flying across the room. It fell facedown, open, pages bent out at odd angles. Charles stamped on it for good measure.

Leo and his whore weren’t going to win that easily. If the money was no longer here, and Leo was still dangling from her apron strings, that could mean only one thing: She had it.

Charles glanced around her well-appointed study. Someone had spent a small fortune on this house, its furnishings, and maintenance. And Mrs. Whedon had quit the field quite abruptly, if his memory served.

Almost as though she’d come in to some kind of windfall.

He picked up the poker and swung it at the wall. Plaster gave way like the chalk cliffs at Dover. Charles swung again, raining dust down onto the books.

Damn her. He swung again, and again.