"I'll do that." With respectful nods to them both, Thompson stepped back.
Lucifer clicked the reins and the blacks stepped out. He glanced at her, but had to look back to his horses. They passed Jem, swinging down the lane. "You have no idea," Lucifer said, "how pleasantly surprised I am to see you with Jem in your train."
"Why? I didn't say I wouldn't."
"You didn't say you would, either, and you are the most contrary female I've ever met."
She couldn't decide whether to be pleased or insulted. "Why are you ordering locks? Because of last night?"
His gaze touched her face. "Because of the intruder."
A frisson of awareness raced through her; she carefully kept it from her face. She wasn't going to let what had happened last night inhibit her from continuing with their joint investigations. She had a shrewd notion he'd be quite happy to see her retreat from the field, a victim of consciousness. But last night had come about by her insistence; just because he'd given her precisely what she'd wanted-even though, as he'd observed, she hadn't known for what she was asking-she wasn't about to convert into some mindless ninny.
She wasn't about to let his warning about the next time worry her, either. It would be up to her if ever there was a next time, and she hadn't yet made up her mind.
Shocking, of course, but there it was. She should be swooning, not sitting beside him, calmly if warily. She might not have appreciated last night's possibilities, not until she'd been in the middle of them, but she was twenty-four. She knew what he'd meant by his final words.
They'd been uttered like an oath. One that had carried a great deal of conviction. After a tense moment, face hard, all angular planes, he'd stepped back and let her slip past him, out onto the lawn. She'd looked back just once and seen him standing, a dark, forbidding shadow at the entrance to the shrubbery. Lucifer, indeed. All hot desire.
Temptation was his middle name.
And she'd felt safe, utterly and completely safe-safe not just physically, but at some much deeper level-while in his arms.
Why that should be so was a mystery, but it was pointless to cavil. Just how far that sense of safety might tempt her she didn't know, but in all her twenty-four years, he was the first to make her feel that being a woman desiring and desired was an experience available to her.
Deep in her mind lay a very strong feeling that just as he was the first, he might also be the last.
"The intruder"-she grabbed the curricle's rail as he took the comer into the main lane-"how did he get in?"
"There was a window with a loose latch-the one in the dining room facing the side lawn."
"So that's how he got out so fast." After a moment, she asked, "Do you think he'll return?"
"Not immediately, but sometime. Whatever he was after, he hasn't found it. If it was enough to commit murder for, then he'll be back."
"Are you sure the intruder is the murderer?"
He grimaced. "No. But unless there were four people visiting Horatio on Sunday morning-the murderer, you, me, and the intruder-and we've found absolutely no trace of the murderer, then the intruder is the murderer."
The gates of the Manor appeared around the bend; he didn't slow. "Bear with me." He flicked her a glance. "Bar your father and brother, you're the only sane and definitely innocent person I can talk to about this, and for obvious reasons, I can't yet talk to your father or brother."
She regarded him calmly.
He had to look to his horses. "I believe Horatio was killed because of some book. Everyone knew that on Sunday morning, the Manor should have been deserted. The downstairs doors were never locked. The murderer-a local who was not at church-left his horse behind the shrubbery and went to the drawing room. He started examining books, pulling them from the shelves-then Horatio disturbed him. On Monday afternoon, I noticed three books not properly pushed in."
"Where?"
"Bottom of the last bookshelf against the inner wall."
Near the gap where she'd surmised the murderer must have hidden. "So-the murderer is after a book."
"Or something in a book."
"Could the book be the item Horatio wanted you to appraise?"
"No. Horatio wouldn't have asked me to appraise a book. He was the foremost authority in the field. If he'd found something spectacular, and all the signs suggest he had, he wouldn't have needed my opinion to be sure."
They'd reached the road to Axmouth; he slowed and turned the curricle. When they were rolling back to Colyton, Phyllida asked, "Why did you say something in a book?"