Page 20 of The Earl's Secret
“Then perhaps it is the company you keep that should be in question.”
“Actually, my mother was quite pleased when I made friends with Hope and Faith Newfield, daughters of the esteemed Lord Embury.”
“If only she knew.”
“If only,” she agreed. “Now, on to the task at hand.”
He nodded. “Yes, Captain,” to which she rolled her eyes, and he began to read her the names of each statue.
“You can read Greek?” she asked, although it made sense, for she knew that Gideon could, and it seemed whatever Gideon could do, so could Devon.
“I can,” he confirmed. “Not as well as your brother, but I have enough knowledge to get by. We learned it at Eton.”
“I see,” she said. “My tutor did not teach us Greek. I wish she had. It would have been a far more useful skill than those which we did learn.”
“I can imagine,” he said.
They continued on the list of statues, until she had written the names out.
“I’m not seeing anything out of the ordinary,” he said. “As I’ve been inspecting each statue, I’ve looked it over every which way, trying to see if there is anything of note, any secret compartments or holes or anything that might suggest the statue doesn’t belong, but it seems there is nothing suspicious here.”
“Very well,” she said with a sigh. “Perhaps the search in this gallery was for nothing.”
“Sometimes to find what one is looking for, one must rule out what is not necessary,” Devon said, and she raised a brow at him.
“You have become quite the philosopher in your old age.”
“Yes, as I am so much your senior.”
She shook her head but couldn’t help her smile as she stood, placing the paper and pen on the chair behind her. “We best clean up this mess before we depart, lest we give my mother any ideas of what we are doing.”
“You don’t want her to know?”
“No,” she said. “The promise of treasure would either raise her hopes for them only to be dashed, or she would have the entire staff searching aimlessly and we would never find anything. Best to leave the secret as it is for now.”
“And keep the search between us,” he said, reaching out and taking a sheet from her. They locked eyes and she nodded slowly, even as she felt her body growing heavy at his gaze.
“Between us,” she repeated, her voice just above a whisper, and she had to turn away before she was denied again.
Damn Devon Addison. The more time she spent with him, the harder it was to resist him. And that could never do. For allowing him in would only lead to one thing – trouble.
CHAPTER8
Devon slept fitfully that night, tossing in the strange bed. But it wasn’t the bed that was causing his sleeplessness. No, it was something – someone – else entirely. Lady Cassandra.
If he didn’t know any better, he would think she was a witch who had cast a spell upon him. Every time he was around her, he could hardly keep his mind straight. All he wanted to do was wrap his arms around her, lace his fingers into her gorgeous, lush strands of auburn hair, push her against the wall, and take her again.
He groaned aloud as one hand came, unbidden, to the growing erection between his legs at the thought of her. He couldn’t have her again – she had made it abundantly clear she would never marry him and he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice – but he would always have the memory of her, the one that he treated himself to time and again.
Devon kept his eyes closed as he recalled their coming together. There had been a house party at the Sutcliffes’ London residence, and he had been trying to convince Gideon to have a few extra drinks to loosen up, of course doing so himself to help encourage his friend. It was before his father had passed, before he had become Earl and accepted all of the responsibilities that accompanied such a role.
He suspected Cassandra had stolen a couple of the favored glasses of brandy from her brother, but she had been well within her right mind – he would never take a woman who was not aware of her actions, that was for certain. Especially Cassandra.
Still, they had likely each been less inhibited than they would have otherwise been, and he had actually been looking for Gideon when Devon had found her in the library instead. He had asked what she was doing, and she told him she was trying to find facts about the badger’s eating habits of all things in order to win a friendly bet she had made with Lord Ferrington.
She had been suspicious of Devon’s motivation when he had asked her more about the topic, convinced that he was just out to trick her, make fun of her, or to try to prove her wrong in some way.
“Are you part of some prank on me, my lord? Or are you working alongside Lord Ferrington?” she had asked, to which he had shaken his head before placing a finger on her lips.
