Eloisa's Adventure (12 page)

“There
are no steps outside?” Eloisa watched Simeon shake his head. “What
about the towers? Don’t they lead up to the second and third
floors?”

“Well,
yes, but there is only one window to get through and that is
nothing more than a narrow slit. You couldn’t get through it so I
really doubt that he could. There is no door on the ground floor of
the towers to secure. Come on. Let’s get this done and then we can
get some sleep.”

CHAPTER
SEVEN

In the
study, Eloisa stood beside the door and watched Simeon go through
the same process he had carried out in each of the rooms they had
been through. Upon entering, he scoured the room carefully, checked
behind and underneath all the furniture and then they knocked on
the walls. Before they left they locked the windows then closed the
shutters and curtains.

An hour
later, they reached the last room on the ground floor. So far, they
had found nothing untoward, but that circumstance swiftly
changed.

“Sit
down for a minute, Eloisa, I just want to check the contents of
this desk while we are alone,” he murmured. Before she could answer
he took a seat behind the desk and began to rifle through the
papers in what appeared to be the study.

Eloisa
moved to the fireplace, and held her candle aloft.

“Is this
your uncle?” she asked as she eyed the rather dapper man in the
huge portrait that hung over the fireplace.

Apart
from the eyes, the shorter framed man appeared to have fair hair,
whereas Simeon’s was dark. There was something about the eyes of
the man in the portrait that suggested that he had experienced his
fair share of worries in life, and was wiser because of it. She
suspected that in life, he had a benevolent wisdom about him that
could be a threat to his enemies, and a comfort to those he cared
about. She quiet liked him.

“That’s
Uncle George. He was a nice old fellow when he was here, I
think.”

She
turned to look at him. “But your father didn’t get on with him?”
She saw rather than heard him sigh. “I am sorry, I don’t mean to
pry.”

“It’s
not that,” Simeon replied darkly. “It is just that someone has been
through this desk. The papers I put in this top drawer all related
to finance. They are now all jumbled up in the bottom
drawer.”

“Someone
has rifled through them.” Eloisa frowned and moved closer to the
desk, but she didn’t expect him to answer. “Has anything been
taken?”

“It
looks like our intruder is, or was, looking for something in
particular,” Simeon growled.

“Like
what? If it is your financial papers, surely he would have taken
them with him, wouldn’t he?”

“If he
wanted to steal something or investigate the family’s wealth? Yes,
most probably. These have been rifled through in such a way that it
looks like our intruder was after something in
particular.”

With
that, Simeon pulled out several drawers on the other side of the
desk and began to rifle through the papers inside. He tried to
remember if he had left any financial papers behind but was certain
he had taken everything of interest three weeks ago.

He was
about to close the drawer when a seal on a parchment located at the
back of the top drawer captured his attention. He picked it up and
studied the writing but didn’t recognise it as being
George’s.

Eloisa
tried to peer over the top of it. It was incredibly rude of her to
pry, but she was intrigued and, as far as she was concerned,
Simeon’s problems involved her now that she was alone in the house
with her host.

“What is
it?” she asked when the lack of lighting within the room prevented
her from reading the spidery scrawl. Thankfully, Simeon was willing
to indulge her curiosity and handed her the parchment before he
turned his attention toward looking through the rest of the
papers.

“Oh
dear, I am sorry,” she whispered as she read the carefully penned
letter. It was from a captain in the army, notifying George
Calversham of the death of his son, Renwick Calversham, who died in
a field hospital several days after receiving a gunshot wound to
his head.

“Renwick
was my cousin. He was about the same age as me, but was a pompous
arse, if you ask me,” Simeon growled. He threw her an apologetic
look. “I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but he was a
wastrel as a young man. My uncle threatened to cut him off entirely
if Renwick didn’t sort himself out and find something useful to do
with his time. When Renwick ignored him, George purchased a
commission for him, and waited until Renwick was in his cups, as he
was regularly inclined to be. George had his staff deliver Renwick
to the army base while drunk. Apparently, Renwick woke up to find
the drill sergeant screaming at him, but it was too late to leave.
Several months after that, we heard that Renwick had been sent
abroad and had died in battle. It seemed that he was as useless in
the army as he was in anything else he turned his attention to,” he
snorted.

Eloisa
stared at him and quietly put the parchment back onto the desk.
“Were you in the army?”

Simeon
looked up at her. “Yes, but I wasn’t a wastrel. I just wanted to
see a bit of the world. I served abroad, but got sent home when I
was injured and unable to fight again.”

“I am
sorry,” she replied gently. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask
where he had been shot, and when, but didn’t want to unearth
painful memories for him, and so remained quiet.

“It’s in
the past now. Thankfully, I had my family estate to return to.
After a good period of rehabilitation, I was able to help my father
run the estates. I recently purchased one of my own in Cumbria.
Unfortunately, Uncle George then passed away and, being the sole
heir to his estate, I found myself lumbered with this place.” He
looked up at her again, this time a little ruefully. “The rest, as
they say, is history.”

Eloisa
sighed and shook her head. She couldn’t imagine owning a house at
all; even a modest one like the rectory. He seemed to come from an
entirely different world to the one she was used to, and that alone
was more than enough of a warning that she must not get too
attracted to him.

Not too attracted, meaning you are already attracted to him.
You would be a nincompoop to fall in love with him,
a small voice warned her.

She gave herself a stern mental shake and assured herself
that this was
not
love. The tender feelings she had toward Simeon were more
along the lines of puppy love; a first crush. It was important to
remember that this tall, handsome, debonair stranger was in her
life only briefly. As soon as the storm cleared, they would part
ways and never see each other again.

Strangely, that thought left her feeling more than a little
sad, and troubled her more than the thought of the intruder
returning. She wandered aimlessly around the room while she waited
for him to finish searching the contents of the drawers. Lost in
musings of the heart, she turned around to look at him when his
curse broke the silence.

“What is
it?”

“Someone
has written something. The ink has leaked through to this
parchment, see?”

“So?”
She walked toward the desk.

“It’s
not my uncle’s writing,” Simeon replied.

“So?”
When he looked up at her impatiently she rolled her eyes. “What is
to say that someone quite innocently came in here to write a quick
note? It’s probably nothing,” she declared dismissively.

Simeon
stared down at the ghostly outline of words and letters on the
parchment. He didn’t know how he knew, but he was positive this had
something to do with his uncle’s death. He would have noticed
something like this when he had searched the drawers several weeks
ago. This had been written while he had been away.

“I wish
there was enough light to see,” he groused.

“In the
morning there will be,” she replied crisply.

He
glared at her. “Are you always this positive about everything?” he
challenged darkly.

Eloisa
turned to look at him and smiled a little sheepishly. “If you look
on the positive side of things, you will always realise that
whatever situation you are looking at could be a lot worse. I mean,
look at us. The intruder locked us into the pantry – with all the
food. The intruder had you running around the first floor after him
– only to stop at the top of the stairs and be hit with the food he
had just lost. He has stolen your horse – but he now has to race it
across the wet, soggy fields in the dark.” She pointed to the
window. “Although we are stuck in this house for the time being, we
are warm and dry, and have full stomachs. He is outside, cold, wet,
and undoubtedly thoroughly miserable. Not only that, but there is a
runaway coach and horses charging around the country lanes
somewhere, most probably without a driver by now as well as its
passengers. Luck may shine on us and run the intruder over.” She
shook her head and looked around them. “Dark and foreboding it
might be here, but we are a lot better off than him right now,” she
declared firmly.

He
suddenly grinned at her and, in spite of the dangers that seemed to
lurk in every corner, had the sudden urge to laugh. She was right.
It was easy to get bogged down with the seemingly endless mysteries
that surrounded them. Now that she had pointed out the facts, their
situation wasn’t as bad as he had first thought. At least they had
a nice warm bed for the night and were drying out with each minute
they were in the house.

“I take
your point,” he mused wryly. When something unusual caught his eye,
he frowned and stared at it.

“What is
it this time?” Eloisa asked impatiently when she noticed his scowl.
She wondered if he liked to err on the side of doom and gloom. He
always seemed to be so serious and worried about
something.

“What
have you noticed?” he asked casually as he leaned back in his
chair. He folded his hands behind his head and studied
her.

Backlit
by the fire, she had a golden haze around her that made her look a
little angelic. The voluminous skirts that seemed to enshroud her
glistened and sparkled as they swirled in the firelight. While her
slender shoulders were bare, they emphasised the fullness of her
bosom, bound tightly within the confines of her corset. He studied
her waist carefully and wondered if his hands could span her
slender waist.

Eloisa
felt a little unnerved by the rather assessing way he was studying
her and turned her attention to the room they were in.

“What?”
She asked, when she couldn’t think about anything other than the
intent way he was watching her.

“The
fire,” Simeon mused. “At least our intruder had the foresight to
light a fire for us.”

She
gasped and whirled around to stare in horror at the roaring flames.
“He was in here all along.” She threw him a dark look and frowned
at the hearth. “Why didn’t we see the light beneath the door when
we went upstairs?”

Simeon
shrugged. If he was honest, he had been too busy thinking about
their kiss to pay any attention to the house itself. He knew his
way around - sort of - and had been more intent on getting to the
bedroom and away from danger than he had about looking at the
bottom of doorways.

“He may
have put something against the bottom of the door,” she murmured
thoughtfully.

“Maybe,
I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter, does it? It does point to
the fact that he was in here and was most probably looking for
something.”

“Is
there any safe or anything in here where you uncle kept his private
papers?”

“I have
everything of importance,” Simeon assured her. “The documents
relating to the house were with George’s solicitor at the time of
his death. They were handed over to my legal representative weeks
ago. The personal financial papers, and the papers I considered
important, were removed the last time I was here. I don’t think
George had a safe, or a secret hiding place, anywhere.”

“A
secret hiding place; like secret stairs and passageways?” Eloisa
asked with lifted brows.

A
tendril of suspicion swept through him. “Yes, exactly,” he murmured
thoughtfully. “If he has something of worth, he would undoubtedly
stash it where he knew it wouldn’t be found.”

Eloisa
nodded. “Like a secret passageway.”

“Exactly. There is nothing we can do about finding them right
now though. Even if we could find the entrance, we wouldn’t have
enough light to see. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to
spend what’s left of the night stuck in a dark and creepy
corridor.”

Eloisa
shuddered.

“Come
on, I think I have seen enough for one night.” He escorted her to
the door and remained by her side all the way to her
bedroom.

“Good
night,” she whispered quietly, suddenly very aware of the intimacy
of being alone in the dark with him.

“Good
night, Eloisa. I will knock on the door when it is time to get
up.”