Page 72 of Nothing Compares to the Duke
Bending at the waist, she scooped an object from the sand, and held it up in triumph. As he approached, it glinted in the sun.
“Sea glass,” she told him, holding the shard of bottle green glass up to catch the light. Its edges had been rubbed smooth. “Do you think it’s from a shipwreck?”
“Possibly.” Rhys thought it more likely from refuse someone had dumped in the sea, but he rather liked Bella being more fanciful than he was.
“Look!” She ran toward a spot on the beach where he could see something sticking out of the sand. She bent again and came up with a beautiful shell, spiraled and striped with a reddish color.
“If I’d known you were this lucky, I would have brought you with me to a gambling den long ago,” he teased when she placed the delicate shell in his palm.
“Do you take ladies to gambling dens often?” Her fingers were cold when she retrieved the shell and her lips trembled as she waited for his answer.
“No.” It was true depending on how one defined the wordoften. “You’re shivering. Should we go back and get warm?”
She scanned the beach and looked out on the sea as if reluctant to depart but then offered him a decisive nod. “I’d like that.”
Rhys’s joke about burning the letters Radley had left behind to throw them off his trail proved truer than he’dexpected. They’d found a pile of wood stacked inside the cottage, but the paper was all they had in the way of kindling.
When he turned back to collect the bundles, he was struck by the sight of Bella removing her soaked petticoats. She let the fabric pool at her feet.
“Do you need help?” she asked when she noticed him watching her.
“No, I think I can manage.” He wasn’t used to building his own fires, but he suspected he could manage it far better than he could temper his raging libido.
He turned back to the fireplace and tried not to think about what the sounds of shifting fabric behind him meant. The grate was full of ash and he used the small shovel near the fireplace to collect a pile.
“Wait.” Bella stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “What is that?”
He looked closer at the debris he’d collected. “Bits of paper. More letters, perhaps.”
Bella leaned across his shoulder and began collecting the larger pieces. Once she’d pushed aside some of the ash with her fingers, unburnt pieces emerged. They were layered as if they’d been thrown in together, perhaps torn from a journal. Or a ledger.
After a few moments, Bella had collected about twenty pieces that were still intact enough to detect writing. She carried them to a table near the window and began laying them out one by one.
“We don’t know what’s been burned. All the essential pieces might be missing.”
“I’d still like to try.”
“I’ll collect the rest and get the fire going.”
Once he had a good blaze, Rhys turned to offer Bella a spot closer to the warmth and found her hunched over the pieces in that entirely absorbed way of hers that made him wonder if she realized he was still in the room.
“I’ve found something.” Her tone was shocked, her gaze wide as he approached.
“Just another ruse, do you think?”
“No, I believe this was from a journal.” She pointed to three jagged pieces that seemed to only connect along a row of two lines, most of which were missing. “This doesn’t sound like a letter. It’s part of a list.” She drew in a sharp breath. “I think it’s an address.”
Rhys placed a hand on the back of her chair and leaned closer. “I recognize aB. Two of them. Can you make out the rest?”
“Brine or Byrne, perhaps. A street name. And then this is unmistakable.” She ran her fingers over a word that was missing a few letters where a hole had been burned in the paper. “It’s Bishopsgate. I’m certain of it.”
“You’ve very clever.” Her dress was wet with seawater, her hair windblown and coming out of nearly every pin, and her fingers were dirty with soot. She was also the most desirable woman he’d ever seen.
Her cheeks reddened and he watched her swallow hard, as if struggling to accept his words. She’d always been terrible with compliments.
“Thank you,” she finally said quietly. “I’m sorry but it appears we’ve come to the seaside just days after he headed to London.”
“But we wouldn’t know that unless we’d come to the seaside.”
