Raven (Gentlemen of the Order 2)

“Perhaps we might wait until morning to question the servants.” Desire flowed thick and heavy in her voice. “You must be tired. I am just as eager to rest my aching limbs and long for the comfort of a bed.”

Oh, she had other things on her mind besides sleep.

He laughed lightly despite his niggling apprehension. “Why not say what you mean?” They stopped inside the covered porch. He slipped his arm around her waist and drew her round to face him. “Say what you really want, Sophia.”

A coy smile played on her lips. “Make love to me, Finlay.” She cupped his cheek, stroked his beard. “I’ve spent years without you. Now the need to feel you moving inside me has brought a new kind of desperation.”

His mouth found hers in the darkness. He would find her in a room of a hundred women. He would know her taste, know the smoothness of her lips, the rhythm of her heartbeat, the cadence of her breath.

“Fill me.” She slipped her tongue over his, hardening his cock. “Make me feel whole like only you can.”

He dragged his mouth away and grabbed her hand. In his mind, they were already darting upstairs, and they had not yet reached the front door.

The door was locked.

“Mrs Friswell must have retired for the evening,” Sophia said impatiently. “Come, we can enter through the herb garden. The door is always open. If not, Blent keeps a key in the cottage.”

They hurried to the rear of the house, stopping twice to kiss like lovers in the bloom of youth—frantic for physical contact.

The rear door was locked, too.

Sophia rubbed the nape of her neck and frowned. “That is odd.”

The word odd roused Finlay’s earlier unease. “I expect they’re eating the b

est food in the pantry and burning beeswax candles, not tallow.” He spoke to soothe her fears—hoped he was wrong to suspect something sinister. “That or they’ve taken advantage of your absence and ventured to the nearest tavern to drink themselves silly.”

“There’s plenty of wine and ale here if they’re so inclined.”

He shrugged. “Gone to visit family, then.”

“Mrs Friswell has a sister in Bisley. But Blent wouldn’t leave the hounds.”

Blent had left the dogs. His cottage sat in darkness. Finlay banged and hammered on the door but received no reply. A quick scan of the kennels confirmed the animals were accounted for. Blent couldn’t have gone far.

Perhaps Mrs Friswell was in the woods, chanting curses and conjuring spells, summoning the ghosts of her ancestors.

With a powerful barge of the shoulder, Finlay forced the cottage door. “Blent will have to fix the frame upon his return. It will serve him right for abandoning his post.”

They entered the house, though Finlay had to duck to clear the low lintel. The rooms were clean and uncluttered. Finlay found a tinderbox and lit the lamp, then examined the array of leather-bound books on the shelf.

“If Blent sold these, he would make a tidy sum,” Finlay said, running his finger over the gilt lettering on the spine of Wieland’s Oberon. Indeed, a further inspection of Blent’s rooms revealed other expensive items.

“This chessboard and table must be worth something, too.” Sophia stood before a brass inlaid rosewood table, a quality piece that could grace any peer’s home.

“Does the card table belong to you?” It was hardly furniture suitable for a gardener’s cottage.

“No. Blent asked if he might bring sentimental items from home when his mother died. It must be his table. As is the chessboard.”

Finlay picked up the white knight. “This is turned ivory, a rather exquisite piece.” The mahogany chess box bore a brass plate engraved with the name Fredrick Blent. “Blent is certainly a man of untold secrets.”

He glanced at Sophia, who was studying papers she’d found in a leather writing case on the side table.

“Undoubtedly. Finlay, come and look at these.”

Finlay crossed the room.

Sophia handed him a detailed sketch of a formal garden with a Baroque terrace and intricate canals, and another of a neoclassical rotunda on the bank of a meandering lake.