Page 17 of All Scot and Bothered

In that place so cavernous and cold and full of shadows, only one being could hold court there.

One being whose sole reason for existence was to punish those who were wicked.

Genny hurried to the open window and leaned out of it. “Don’t you touch that door, I’ll be down to admit you directly.”

“Thirty. Seconds,” the Scotsman repeated.

Genny pivoted, running her hands down her bodice, visibly shaken. “I nearly forget how monstrous big he is,” she breathed. “I declare, he could rip the iron gates from their hinges with one hand.”

With that confidence-shredding observation, Genny took the space of a breath to compose herself, then swept out of the study before Cecelia could ask one of a thousand questions that sprang to her lips.

Fear twanged tight in her belly. She knew of only one deep-voiced Scotsman with monstrous proportions. However, he wasn’t with Scotland Yard. He wouldn’t be able to step away from his bench as Lord Chief Justice to break in the door of a common—or uncommon, as the case may be—gambling house.

Would he?

Cecelia was suddenly so frightened, she was tempted to rip off her ridiculous disguise and bolt.

She pushed herself into the desk, tugging at the cloak’s tightly laced collar as sweat gathered beneath her wig in the hot and humid afternoon. Glancing down, she read more of the letter, grasping at anything to do other than sit and tremble as the law advanced on her.

I wish I could have met you, darling. Your letters have been a comfort and a balm to me all these years. I gave you as long a life as I could without secrets. But now it is up to you what you do with them. The school beneath my gambling enterprise is everything to me, and to the women who rely upon it. I know your heart. How good and soft it is, but you are of my blood, which means you’ve steel constructed to your spine. You’ll need it, I think, and for that I am sorry.

I’m delighted we share traits, a few of which are an affinity for numbers, codes, and formulae. These secrets I protect I have confided in no one, not even Genevieve. Ihave, however, written them down in a book, along with where to find the evidence you’ll need. You’ll discover the codex in a springboard beneath the top drawer of the desk at which you sit. Open the drawer and press the bottom of it. Use the Pollux cipher to decrypt the combination, which is the name of our favorite poem.

The one that pierced your heart when you were sixteen.

“Aeneid,” Cecelia whispered.

The key to the codex, Cecelia, is in the color we both find very dear.

Good luck, my heart, and goodbye.

Blinking back a bevy of emotion, Cecelia turned the clever dials, replacing the letters of the epic Greek poem title for numbers. She gasped when the bottom of the hidden compartment gave way, depositing a finely crafted diary into her hand.

She ran her fingers over the innocuous binding, finding the pale flesh color of the leather a little disturbing. Opening it, she leafed through the pages. It didn’t at all surprise her to see almost no words, only symbols, numbers, formulae. Dates, perhaps, if she remembered her Sumerian numerals correctly… or was this the Babylonian sexagesimal system? She squinted, turning the book sideways.

Voices echoed off the marble of the foyer.

Genny’s.

And the devil’s.

Even as her stomach turned an anxious flop, a part of her stirred.Partsof her. The section of her brain that came alive at the idea of solving a cipher.

And a different place, altogether.

A place she’d been attempting to ignore since she’d spied the frenetic copulation in the garden. A soft, femininedepth that hummed and clenched at the danger she instinctively sensed in the approaching man.

She was afraid, she realized. And stimulated simultaneously?

How tremendously bizarre.

Squirming in the thronelike chair, her boot connected with something soft under the desk.

Or rather, someone.

A little squeak from beneath produced a strangled sound of astonishment from Cecelia’s own throat. She launched back in her chair, nearly tipping over.

Steadying herself, she leaned to the side to peek beneath the desk, using one hand to stabilize the wig atop her head.