Page 20 of Dukes All Night Long

B other and blast ! Jenna wished she knew a few worse swear words, for if she did, she would use them. She could not get the French doors open.

Her friends with older brothers possibly had a choicer vocabulary, but Jenna came from a family of six girls, and her father and the men servants were always very circumspect in their language if any of the ladies of the house might be listening.

Her technique with a knife and a hair pin worked on the very similar doors at her own house—she had worked out the mechanism by the time she was eleven, and she and her sisters had frequently used the doors to evade their governesses’ restrictions on their freedom.

Carter’s doors looked exactly the same. Jenna had made note of that fact more than five years ago, when the man’s mother was alive, and she and Sabina used to come to Lady Carter for piano lessons.

They did not react the same to Jenna’s manipulations. No matter how hard she tried, or how carefully she listened for the movements of the inside of the mechanism, the door latch would not click open.

“Here,” said a man’s voice close to her ear. “Let me try.”

Jenna shot up from her knees, and the back of her head hit something. Another head, for it moved away immediately, proclaiming, “Ow.”

She refused to feel guilty, though alarm was coursing through her, insisting she run. It was too late for that. Even if he let her go, he could tell Carter about her, and a brief description would soon point the horrid man in her direction.

Better to attack, then. “You startled me,” she accused, narrowing her eyes at the man. In the gloom she could make out that he was young, perhaps a couple of years older than her. Something about the clothes suggested he was not quite top drawer, but the accent was genteel enough.

“I apologize,” he replied, with a cheeky grin. “The blow to my chin was clearly my own fault. May I try to open the door for you?”

What was he up to? Jenna considered him for a moment. After all, what was the worst that could happen? She moved sideways to give him access to the lock.

He held out his hand. For one crazy moment she considered putting her hand in it, as if they were about to dance, but then she realized that she was still holding the knife. She gave it to him.

Jenna had been putting the knife into the door at an angle that pressed up underneath the latch. The stranger inserted it from above, still at an angle, then thumped the frame just below the latch, and the door popped open.

As simple as that. How intensely annoying .

“Ladies first,” he said, pulling the door all the way open while stepping out of her path.

“Every door seems to be just a little bit different,” he commented in a conversational tone as he followed her into the dark room.

It had been the study when Jenna was last here, and she’d only ever seen it through an open door.

If it was still the study, it was the most likely place to find Sabina’s letters and the drawings.

“Some methods work with one door, then another door that looks exactly the same needs a different technique entirely.”

Crossing the room without bumping into anything was taking most of her concentration. “Are you in the habit of breaking into houses?” she asked. Her own question sent panic racing through her nerves and muscles. She was alone with a stranger in a dark room, and nobody knew she had even gone out!

“Breaking out, more usually,” he replied, his voice still relaxed and friendly. “But if one arrives home to find the butler has locked the door one left unlatched, what else is one to do but break in?”

Despite her mind trying to convince her that she was in danger, Jenna could not help but feel comforted by the stranger’s casual tone, but another thought occurred to her. “Are you a friend of Sir Thomas Carter?” She reached the fireplace wall, and felt along the mantelshelf for the vase of spills.

“Good Lord, no,” the man protested. “I have not even met the man.”

She guessed again. “A guest in this house?” After all, within walking distance there were only a few farmhouses and her own home. And he was an unlikely guest in a farmhouse, with that elegant air and that refined way of speaking.

“No, indeed.” He had found the poker, and was stirring the ashes to uncover embers.

Jenna set the spill to a hot coal and in a moment was rewarded with a flame she could use to light the candelabra on the desk.

The stranger pulled the curtains closed, being careful to leave no chinks that might show light out into the garden. “I have never been to this house until I followed you,” he said.

He followed me . That was a clue. If he came from her house, and was not one of her father’s servants—which he wasn’t, for Jenna knew them all—he must have arrived with Lord Wolverton. And he wasn’t a groom or a coachman, she’d take an oath on that.

“You are Lord Wolverton’s valet,” she guessed.

He bowed. “I’m Garry,” he said. “And you are Lady Jenna. What are we looking for?”

She was tempted to tell him the whole story, but no. She only had his word for it that he was not a crony of Carter’s, and he spoke far too confidently for a valet.

“I shall search. You keep watch that nobody comes,” she said.

Going obediently to the window, he stopped with his hand on the curtain. “Is it something to do with why Lady Sabina is so cold to Lord Wolverton? And why Sir Thomas Carter told Wolf—Wolverton, I mean—that she is promised to him? We came here so Wolverton could propose, as you probably guessed.”

Jenna knelt to start on the first of the six drawers on the left-hand side of the desk. There were an equal number on the other side. “We did guess. Sabina loves him, I can assure you of that. Lord Wolverton, I mean. Not Carter.”

“Then why…? There has to be a reason. Something like…wait. I have it! He’s blackmailing her?”

Garry was too quick. “Mr. Garry, you must promise me you will not tell your master.” Sabina would never forgive Jenna if she disclosed Sabina’s secret.

“Then we are looking for something to Lady Sabina’s discredit?” A touch of disapproval colored the valet’s voice. “Incautious letters? That is what a blackmailer always uses in horrid novels.”

This man’s guesses were alarmingly accurate. “She was an innocent child of fifteen,” Jenna protested. “The man should never have encouraged her, let alone…” She had almost told him about the drawings. What was it about this man that encouraged confidences?

She shut the bottom drawer of the left-hand side. Nothing suspicious in any of the six—in fact, the bottom three drawers were empty except for a few sheets of blank paper. She scurried across to the right without rising to her feet.

“She should tell Wolf,” Garry said. He had used his fingers to create a peep hole where the drapes met, and pressed his eye up to it. “He would understand. A music teacher, was it? Or a dancing master?”

“An art tutor,” Jenna admitted.

“My sis…” He coughed and began again. “I have heard that young ladies have a habit of falling in love with theirs. Or the teachers fall in love with the young ladies.”

His sisters? But he was a valet, was he not? Perhaps he was some lord’s by-blow, and was referring to his noble half-sisters.

“Nothing on this side, either.” Jenna frowned at the shelves that filled alcoves on either side of the fireplace.

In her house, they would be full of books, but Carter was obviously not much of a one for reading.

It was easy for Jenna to scan along the shelves, ignoring the vases, statuettes, and other objects. No letters. No drawings.

None, either, in the cupboards at the base of the shelves. There was a sideboard with decanters on top. It was the only other piece of furniture in the room with places where letters might be hidden, but the cupboards were filled with glasses and bottles.

Garry had left the window and was lifting pictures so he could peer behind them.

“What are you doing?” Jenna asked. “Might he have attached the letters and… the letters to the back of the paintings?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Garry said. “I was looking for a safe, but I don’t see one. Nor any papers. If I were a blackmailer, Lady Jenna, I don’t think I’d hide my victim’s secrets where a maid might find them.”

“His bedchamber,” Jenna realized. “We must search his bedchamber.” She set off for the door, but Garry reached it ahead of her.

“Let me go first,” he said. “To check no one is about.”

They made it to Carter’s bedchamber without seeing anyone, but their luck ran out when a man walked in from a door on the other side of the room and stopped in his tracks. He came to a sudden halt and stared at Garry.