He hadn’t felt that way in years.
Nor did he wish to give that feeling up.
But could he sacrifice the well-being of so many others by refusing Northumb’s “offer”?
Mother paced past him in short, quick strides. “Let’s see…We’ve selected St. George’s for the ceremony. I can have the London house ready for a proper wedding breakfast in only a few weeks. And—”
“We’ve?” Geoffrey’s jaw tightened as Mother’s face went pale. She wouldn’t have…He closed his eyes. She would. “What did you have to do with this?” Geoffrey barked.
“What do you mean?”
“Mother,” he growled.
The countess rolled her eyes with an exasperated huff. “I only gave Lady Northumb a bit of intelligence.”
“Who then, in turn, told her husband how exactly to put me over a barrel,” Geoffrey muttered.
“That was rather crass,” Mother admonished. “All we did was help you to make the best decision for you, and now you will be—”
“I’ll not marry Lady Jane,” Geoffrey said, the weight of the past few minutes floating off of his chest and pulling the corners of his lips up as it rose past his face.
The countess whipped around, narrowing her sharp gaze. “What? Don’t be a fool. What will you tell Lord Northumb?”
“I’ll tell him that if he loves his country, as he says he does, then he’ll support the bill on its merit alone, and that if he chooses not to, then he’ll face me again next season.” Geoffrey advanced upon the countess, actually taking glee in what he was about to say.
“And I’ll tell him I’ve already chosen a wife.”
“Who?” The countess’ chin lowered and a perplexed frown crossed her face a moment before her eyes widened and her nostrils flared. “Geoffrey! You—you—can’t be serious,” his mother sputtered.
“Oh, but I am.” It was probably a sin against God, how much satisfaction Geoffrey took saying those four little words, what with the whole “honor thy parents” dictate. Yet months of purgatory, perhaps even hell, would be worth it for the look upon his mother’s face. It would certainly be worth it for the lifetime of heaven that awaited him in Liliana’s arms. “Liliana Claremont is exactly what I want in a wife. She’s intelligent, compassionate and completely honest. In fact, I’d wager she doesn’t have a deceitful, manipulative bone in her body, and to me, that is the only qualification that matters.”
Geoffrey left his mother standing in the library, his step light and relatively pain free. This afternoon, he’d seek out Lord Northumb and make his position clear.
Then tonight, when Liliana joined him in the library, he’d ask her to be his wife.
It was in here. She knew it. The connection between her father and the Wentworth family lay somewhere buried in these dingy, dust-covered trunks. She’d felt it when she’d entered the unused room—a tingle that danced down her spine like the fat brown spider gliding across its gossamer web in the unswept corner.
There was no doubt these were Edmund Wentworth’s belongings. In addition to being precisely where Geoffrey had said they were, there was an ornate EW inscribed on the brass key plate of the largest trunk. Liliana traced her finger over the initials, much as she had the seal on the letters that had brought her to Somerton Park.
Rather than the excitement she’d expected to feel at this moment, a great sadness weighed upon her. There was nothing to be done but to finish her search. Liliana pushed up her sleeves and surveyed the stacks of boxes and trunks. From the amount of dust and cobwebs covering them, she could well believe they had been up here for thirteen years. Liliana swiped her hand across the top of a nondescript wooden box, brushing clean a swath the width of her palm.
She used her hand to clear the rest of the lid and frowned. There were pry marks on the edges, and the lid lifted easily, the lock broken.
The box was stuffed with papers that were yellowed with age. They were also quite disarranged, as though they had been thrown in without care. Or, given the pry marks, searched through hastily. She pulled a handful. There were receipts, bills and descriptions for what seemed to be normal personal items. Liliana took a few moments to scan through them but saw nothing to draw her attention. She did the same through the rest of the box before placing the lid back on it and moving it to the side.
She chose a medium-sized trunk next. It came open with no effort, the lock also broken. Someone had definitely searched through Edmund Wentworth’s things before her. Liliana peered inside, only to find more papers. She sorted through a few to sample their contents.
Her hand began to shake as she came upon a packet of folded vellum tied with a burgundy ribbon. She untied the knot, her fingers fumbling. When she opened the packet, letters written and signed by Edmund Wentworth, late Earl of Stratford, stared up at her. She closed her eyes. The handwriting on the pages was the same as that on the letters she’d found in her father’s study.
Somehow, she’d always known it would be, but actually seeing it with her own two eyes pierced her. The same elaborate E’s, the same flourish on the S’s and O’s.
Liliana scanned the letter quickly, her heartbeat pounding in her ear. It was a missive written to the curator of the British Museum, agreeing to provide funds for the renovation of an exhibit. She was sure that had nothing to do with her father, who to her knowledge had no interest in antiquities, but that wasn’t what made the letter valuable.
Tears burned her eyes, her nose, the back of her throat. She finally had a tangible, concrete link between the late Earl of Stratford and her father’s death. She carefully folded the letter with the incriminating handwriting and placed it in the pocket of her dress.
Now all that was left was to see if her father’s return correspondence might be somewhere in this dusty graveyard of papers, the last record of a man’s life.
Liliana resumed delving through the trunks. She found Edmund Wentworth’s certificate of membership into the Society of Antiquaries, dated 1782. She found more papers, journals detailing descriptions of architectural discoveries, all in the earl’s hand. She found bills of lading for ships importing crates from Greece, Egypt and India, amongst other exotic places. It all looked quite aboveboard, as far as Liliana could tell. Nothing suspicious. Nothing that spoke of treason. Nothing that mentioned Charles Claremont directly or in passing. Nothing that told her anything more than what she already knew.
Finally, she came to the last trunk. It was filled with bric-a-brac, a letter opener, a magnifying glass, a polished stone…the odds and ends of a life that made no sense to someone who didn’t know the owner. There was also a book, a hefty tome some four inches thick. Odd that it wouldn’t be in the library with the rest of the books.
Liliana used both hands to lift it out of the box, nearly tossing it as it flew upward, much lighter than she’d expected. This wasn’t a book at all, but something else. She ran her hands over it, marveling at the realistic page edging, the supple leather cover. Then she opened it.
It was a book, after all, but one cleverly sliced and converted to hold a secret cache, a cache of letters. Her father’s familiar script leapt off the page and Liliana’s vision blurred with tears.