Page 37 of The Earl's Secret
“Different is not always a bad thing,” he said, his voice lowering even more so than it usually did, causing tingles to run up and down Cassandra’s spine.
“No, I do not suppose it is,” she said, as she wondered just whether or not she should pursue this moment of opportunity that had arisen, of the two of them alone, when no one else knew of their whereabouts.
But then Devon suddenly turned away from her, shattering the moment as he loudly opened up each desk drawer, searching within.
Cassandra took slow steps as she approached him from behind.
“Do you really think that something would be hidden in such plain sight?” she couldn’t but ask, and he shrugged.
“Could be,” he said, although she heard the hesitation in his voice, the increased pace of his breathing. She wondered if he was as aware of what was simmering between them as she was. It was what she wanted to further explore, although he seemed to have made his mind up and she certainly wasn’t going to press, not if there was the chance she could be denied by him again.
“Perhaps there is a false bottom to a drawer,” he said.
Cassandra instead searched around the bed, looking beneath it as well as tapping all of the floorboards to see if any were hollow.
After a thorough search of the room, one which was filled with so much tension between them that Cassandra had difficulty concentrating on anything else, they finally decided that they had exhausted any options here.
“Onto the next?” Cassandra asked, and Devon nodded.
“Onto the next.”
They had just exited the cottage when a flash of color from across the lake caught Cassandra’s eye, and she squinted to get a better look.
“Did you see that?” she asked, holding up a hand to stop Devon when he shut the door behind them and came to stand at her back.
“See what?”
“Over there, across the lake,” she murmured, pointing to where the trees were grouped together beyond the water. “Perhaps I am seeing things, but I swear I saw someone moving. The color was too bright to be an animal. Too vivid of a red.”
She looked up at him, finding his face furrowed into a frown of concentration. “I do not see anything now, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing out there,” he said, and she was grateful that he hadn’t labelled her vision imagination. “What do you think it was?”
“I think—ahh!”
She couldn’t help her scream when she heard the crack in the air, one that sounded remarkably like – a gun shot? Then the tree beside them suddenly splintered, and it took Cassandra a moment to realize what was happening.
“Devon? Are we being—”
But he had obviously already realized their alarming circumstances, as he had wrapped a hand around her waist and pulled her in toward him. Then, with his arms tightly about her, he dropped them both to the ground and rolled them together down the small hill in front of them. Cassandra would have far preferred to have retreated deeper into the trees behind them, or better yet, into one of the cottages, but it seemed that Devon had acted without exactly thinking of where they could end up.
For now they were picking up speed down the slope, right toward—
“Devon, stop! We are going to—”
But it was too late. He tried to dig in his heels, but it was not enough to stop their momentum, and they continued on until the cold water splashed over their heads.
Cassandra tried not to cry out, not wanting to provide anyone their whereabouts, but it had been a long time since she had swum in this lake, and there was a reason they had never entered it this early in the year.
“Devon!” she called out as the shallow water splashed over them, although it quickly dropped away and she found her feet were barely meeting the bottom while her head was still breaking through the surface.
She didn’t feel a moment of fear, however, for Devon was there the entire time, his arm around her, keeping her lifted and close to him.
“Are you all right?” he murmured in her ear, and she nodded her head against him, feeling the wet tendrils of hair stuck to her neck as she tried not to shiver, instead pressing her body against him for warmth.
“Are you?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said as though it was a silly question, one which she could only snort at. She was just as good of a swimmer as he was. “Let me guess,” he continued. “You used to follow us to the lake and swim as well?”
“I did, actually,” she said, surprised that he would already know, but then, she supposed he was coming to know her as well as she was him. “Devon, did someone…shootat us?”
