Page 95 of His Wicked Charm

CON STOOD, GAZING down at the now-empty trunk and its contents spread out on the floor around it. Yesterday evening, they had gone back down to the smoking room and removed the last of the items from the chest, even checking beneath the lining. There had been no sign of a key, and finally, discouraged, they had gone to bed.

He had awakened this morning with renewed enthusiasm, but the contents of the trunk looked no more hopeful now. “The most promising thing we have is your ancestor’s journal, but I’ve been able to make out only a few words of it.”

“Why didn’t my father tell me about any of this?” Lilah asked in exasperation.

“He might have thought that you would reject it out of hand,” Con pointed out. “You held rather decided views on mysticism. Would you have accepted it if he had told you about the Sanctuary three years ago?”

“No,” Lilah admitted. “Probably not.”

“Still, it seems odd that he didn’t leave you any warning, given the consequences of not ‘renewing the bond’ every three years.”

“I would have thought he would leave the key with his attorney to give me after his death, along with some sort of explanation. But Mr. Cunningham gave me nothing like that.”

“Perhaps he didn’t want the attorney to know about the key,” Con offered.

“He could have hidden the key, then, and left a letter telling me where it was. A sealed, private letter. Mr. Cunningham wouldn’t have opened and read it, surely.”

Con shrugged. “Not unless he was unscrupulous.”

“I suppose Father could have hidden the key and left a letter for me somewhere in the house, telling me where it was—though that seems a trifle haphazard. But why hide both the key and the note telling me how to find it? Why didn’t he leave the information in an obvious place?”

“Maybe he had some reason to hide it. He thought someone was after the key—the successor to his title, for instance, or Dearborn, who had taken Sabrina’s key already. Sir Virgil feared that person might find it first. And it would do little good to hide the key but leave the message revealing its location where it could be easily found.”

“That would make sense. Perhaps Roberts might know something about it.”

“Who?”

“My father’s valet. Cuddington told me yesterday that he retired and is living in a cottage on the estate.” She added in a confiding manner, “I suspect Cuddington may have a personal interest in the man.”

“Cuddington? You’re joking.”

“I’m not. She blushed when she talked about him.”

“Do you think your father confided in him?”

“I doubt my father revealed secrets of the Brotherhood or their rituals, but Roberts was close to him. He’d been his valet for years. He might know where Father would have kept something important like that. Or if Father had spoken of leaving me a letter.”

“A valet is privy to all sorts of information, more than most of their employers even realize. You’re right. Let’s go visit the man.”

Roberts, it turned out, was unsurprised by their visit. He welcomed them at the front door with a smile and ushered them into the parlor, saying, “Bettina said that you might come.”

“Bettina?”

“Miss Cuddington, I should say. I happened to see her last night as I was taking my evening constitutional. Wonderful woman, Miss Cuddington.”

“There’s no one like her,” Con agreed.

Roberts insisted on making tea and bringing out biscuits for them, but once he had taken care of all the pleasantries, he went straight to the heart of the matter. “Miss Cuddington said you were interested in Sir Ambrose. I knew him of course. I came to the house as a footman when I was sixteen. Your father was but a young lad then. I often had the task of minding him.” He smiled reminiscently. “But I doubt that is what you’re interested in. What is it you’d like to know?”

“I wondered if my father might have left me something,” Lilah said. “Not in his will, but perhaps a personal object.”

“I’m not sure what you mean, miss.”

“I thought you might know where he would have put something he wanted me to have.”

Con added, “Or perhaps he wrote something down for Lilah.”

“His notebook?” the valet asked. “He burned that, I remember. He wasn’t sleeping well there at the end. One night I brought him a cup of hot milk, hoping it would help him sleep, and he was standing at the fireplace, ripping pages from that little book and tossing them in the fire.” Seeing Lilah’s stricken expression, he added, “I’m sorry, miss. I should have realized that he was ill. But he’d been distressed for some months before that—he and Mr. Dearborn had had a disagreement, a falling-out of some sort, and I just thought his spirits were low because of that.”