An Unexpected Pleasure (The Mad Morelands #4)(36)

CHAPTER 7




During the next few days, Megan managed to avoid seeing Theo for more than a few fleeting moments. She chose not to inquire into her own reasons for being happy about that, simply accepting with gratitude the fact that for the next two evenings the duke and duchess and most of their family were committed to social engagements, which meant that the twins, and therefore Megan, had their supper upstairs in the nursery schoolroom. She pleaded illness the following evening, but the concern of the twins and even the duchess, who came to Megan’s room to inquire after her health, forced her to decide that she would have to forego that scheme in the future.

Megan steeled herself the following evening to go down to the family dinner, only to find, to her relief and inexplicable disappointment, that all her effort had been for naught, since Theo had gone out to dine at a friend’s.

That fact was, of course, quite fortunate, as she quickly reminded herself, since tonight she planned to search the duke’s collection room.

Over the course of the last few days, in between the twins’ schooling and her own hours spent in her room frantically studying in order to stay a bit ahead of them, she had finished searching most of the accessible areas of the house, even the servants’ sleeping quarters and the kitchen area downstairs, the latter under the guise of seeking out a cup of hot chocolate. She had found only one other locked room, a small area off the butler’s pantry, which she assumed was the storage place for the family’s extensive silver serving pieces and flatware.

There were valuable items galore throughout the house, all of them sitting out in the open. Some of them looked exotic, but none appeared to her to be of South American origin—though she would be the first to admit that her knowledge in that area was limited. She realized more and more with each passing day the enormous task that she had set herself. She did not know exactly what she was looking for, other than that it was small enough to be carried on a chain about one’s neck, possibly a medallion—provided, of course, that what Mr. Barchester remembered seeing Theo holding secretively was indeed something he had taken from Dennis when he killed him.

It could easily be in a safe in some wall that she had not located, or in a locked box. Or Theo could even have given it to someone else in his family—she could not help but remember his comment about bringing jewels back for his sister Kyria.

However, she realized that in order to actually accomplish any search, she needed to narrow it down to the most likely places where the mysterious object might be located. Those areas were Theo’s own bedchamber and his father’s collection room.

Searching both involved a certain amount of risk, since there was no reason for her to be in either one of those places. She decided to start with the duke’s collection room in the hopes that she would get wonderfully lucky and find her quarry there, and not have to search Theo’s room.

When Theo had mentioned his father’s collection room the other night, Megan’s mind had immediately leaped to the locked room beside the library. It seemed the right place for a scholar to have a room filled with the antique goods that interested him, and a valuable collection would warrant a lock. Besides, she was fairly certain that she had looked in every other room in the house and had found none that contained such a collection, which made it likely that it was the one room into which she had not looked.

It took only a trip to the library with the twins to confirm that the locked door in the library led into the duke’s collection room. The boys had offered to open it for her, explaining that the duke kept the key for it in his study. She had declined, saying that they had best get on with their studies. Besides, she added, she doubted that the duke would want them all poking about his room.

“Oh, he doesn’t mind,” Con assured her cheerfully. “As long as we’re careful.”

“The lock is mostly to keep the servants from going in and dusting. One of his pieces got broken that way once,” Alex explained. “And, of course, he wants to keep thieves out, though it’s my opinion that a thief would take the silver and the jewels, not vases and broken statues and such.”

“Well, those fellows did break into the house to get something out of the collection room that one time at Broughton Park,” Con pointed out.

“He has another one?” Megan asked, her heart sinking at this further demonstration of the enormity of her task.

The boys nodded. “Yes, at the house in the country. It’s larger, actually. Papa spends more time there, and anyway, that house is bigger.”

“But those men weren’t really after anything of Papa’s,” Alex argued. “It was Kyria’s reliquary they wanted.”

“Your father keeps other things in his collection room?” Megan asked quickly. “Valuables that belong to you children?”

Con shrugged. “Sometimes. But nobody else collects much except Papa. Somebody just happened to give Kyria that box.”

“Collapsed on the doorstep and died,” Alex added.

Megan stared. “Are you serious?”

“Oh, yes. Lots of people wanted the box,” Con said matter-of-factly. “Alex was abducted. They tried to get me, too, but I got away.”

“I got away, too!” Alex protested.

“Yes, but it took you longer.”

Megan intervened quickly to cut off one of the twins’ lengthy debates. Close as they were, she had discovered that they were also each other’s chief rival in sports, academics and seemingly every other aspect of life.