Page 75

They crept lightly down the street until they reached Woodside’s residence. He leased a modest townhouse, a fact for which Emma was exceedingly grateful. A large mansion would take far too long to search and would probably contain a fleet of ever-watchful servants. Woodside’s relatively small home was unlikely to be well-staffed.
“I think we should go around to the side,” Ned whispered. “We’ll see if he left any of the windows cracked open. It’s a fairly warm night.”
Emma gave a quick nod and followed her cousin into the narrow alley that ran alongside the building. They were in luck. Woodside had left the rearmost window partially open, presumably to let some fresh air into a room that otherwise received little ventilation.
“It’s a little high,” Ned said with a grimace.
“You’ll just have to boost me up.”
“How will I get in?”
“I guess you won’t,” Emma replied with a nervous smile. “Unless you can find a foothold in the masonry.”
“I don’t like this.”
Emma didn’t particularly like going in by herself, either, but she knew that her cousin would never let her do it if he realized how apprehensive she was. “You’ll have to give me a signal if you see someone coming.”
“How about a cough?” At Emma’s nod, he cupped his hands for her foot and held firm as she drew herself up to the window’s level.
“It looks like his study!” she whispered excitedly, slowly pushing the window up higher. “And the door is closed, so I probably won’t have to worry about servants coming in.”
“I’m going to push up now,” Ned said. “Try to get one of your legs up on the ledge. Once you do that you should be able to get inside easily.”
As Ned propelled her upward, Emma gritted her teeth and used all of her upper-body strength to push against the ledge as she lifted her leg up and swung it through the open window. After that, it was easy to scoot the rest of her body into Woodside’s study, and she dropped herself lightly onto the carpet, mentally blessing her soundless soft-soled shoes. “It’s about time my tree-climbing experience served some useful purpose,” she said softly.
A tiny gleam of moonlight filtered into the room through the open window, but even after Emma’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she found that she could not see well enough to conduct her search. Reaching into her coat pocket, she pulled out a candle and lit it. With the added light, she scanned the room, her gaze finally falling on the crack underneath the door leading to the hall. Any servant passing by could easily see her candlelight glowing through the crack. Emma quickly shrugged off her coat and stuffed it against the bottom of the door.
“All right,” she whispered to herself. “If I were a cheating lowlife, trying to swindle a nice young man out of his money, where would I put his I.O.U.?” The desk seemed the most logical place to start. After all, Woodside certainly wasn’t expecting his home to be broken into by Ned and Emma, so he probably wouldn’t have gone to great lengths to hide the voucher. Emma pulled open the first drawer. Some quills, writing paper, but nothing that resembled the note that Ned had described to her. Emma moved on to the next drawer. Once again, no luck. She gave the third drawer a tug, but it was locked.
Emma’s heart began beating quickly as she rushed to the window. “Ned?” she whispered.
“What?”
“One of the desk drawers is locked.”
“Try a hairpin. Many of those old desks don’t have very good locks.”
“Very well.” Emma scurried back over to the desk, where she removed her cap and pulled a pin from her hair. Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she let out a little sigh and thrust the pin into the lock. Nothing. She twisted it around a few times. Still nothing. Finally she glared at the offending drawer and muttered, “You stupid little lock. I have no idea what I’m doing and you know it.”
The lock turned. Emma smiled widely. “Well now, that wasn’t so difficult.” She rifled through the contents of the drawers. There were a few legal papers, something that looked like a lease to the house, and even some money, but no voucher. Emma quickly put the papers back in order and shut the drawer, making sure that it locked as it closed.
She ran back to the window. “It wasn’t there,” she called down.
“Keep looking!”
With a sigh, Emma turned her attention to a bookshelf that was built into the wall by the door. She supposed that Woodside might have slipped the note into one of the books. Thank goodness this wasn’t a full-fledged library. Emma judged there to be only about thirty or forty books. It wouldn’t take too long to go through them.
Emma climbed onto a little footstool and started on the top shelf, which seemed to contain the complete works of Shakespeare. Hmmm, she thought with a mischievous smile, perhaps Belle really did have something in common with Woodside.
Alex’s carriage pulled up in front of Dunford’s townhouse after careening through the London streets at a breakneck pace. Woodside lived only three short blocks from Dunford, so the two men had elected to leave the carriage there, where it wouldn’t arouse any suspicion.
“I am going to throttle her,” Alex ground out, his long legs carrying him quickly across the street.
Dunford took one look at his friend’s furious expression and decided that Alex might actually be serious.
Within minutes they were in front of Woodside’s townhouse. “I don’t see any signs of forced entry,” Alex whispered, scanning the facade of the building.