How Not to Marry an Earl by Christine Merrill

Author:Christine Merrill
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-09-07T15:35:09+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Apparently, they had decided to pretend that nothing had happened between them. It was just as well, since he had no idea what to say to her that would not make parting from her more difficult.

Did you like it?

Of course she had. Women did not normally scream in that way without there being extreme pleasure or extreme pain. Had it been pain, she’d have asked him to stop. Instead, she had thrown back her head and bitten her lip in a way that made her mouth even more kissable.

But while she had been over the moon in ecstasy, the pain he had experienced was excruciating. He should have locked the door, wrapped her legs around his waist and spent himself where she had asked him to be. Instead, he had run, just as he’d run every other time that his life had not gone to plan. He had grabbed a candle from a hall sconce and walked the endless hallways of Comstock Manor until he was too tired to do anything but sleep.

But she looked well-rested and glowing with vitality. The pinched expression she’d worn when he’d met her had disappeared, as had her dowdy gowns and her brisk manner. The gown she was wearing today was quite fetching and bordered on frivolous. She smiled more easily. She blushed. He had obviously done her good.

She had also decided to meddle in his future plans, which were immutable and not part of their bargain. The quicker they returned to treasure hunting, the sooner he could be away. But now she was talking nonsense to him, weighting her words as if there were some hidden meaning in them that any fool should be able to understand. ‘The Blue Earl,’ he said, then waited patiently for illumination.

‘I discovered that the diamonds were missing when I was a child,’ she said. ‘But I have only been looking for them for the last year or so.’

‘You began after your grandfather died,’ he said, cutting to the truth before she could tell him.

‘It was one of many things he did not want me meddling in,’ she replied.

‘The missing diamonds were supposed to be a secret between the Earl and his Countess,’ he said, then remembered that he could not possibly know something that Comstock had been told by the widow of his predecessor. ‘Or so I would assume.’

‘Very true,’ she said. ‘And you were right to begin your search in the study for the book that might hold answers. Until he died, he kept the materials I needed to find the truth in a locked cabinet in this room.’ Her smile turned smug. ‘Once he was gone, I picked the lock and moved it all to the library.’

‘Well done,’ he said.

‘I have been reading the diaries of the previous Comstocks and believe that the stones were hidden in the tenure of the Blue Earl, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Which means that the book that fits the code key you found must have been in the house at the time of his death in 1648.

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